Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection
Minimising Unemployment: Discussion with Department of Social Protection
10:50 am
Mr. T. J. Fleming:
CE schemes are structured separately and the local community sponsor them and as Mr. Oliver Egan mentioned, there are roughly 400 of those schemes. Perhaps he would correct me if my interpretation of how CE works is work, but effectively the contribution is to the community organisation to employ the supervisor who manages the work of the organisation, the progression and the individual learning plans of the participant. The supervisors of the rural social scheme - there are fewer of them as it is a smaller scheme - are employees of the local development companies. Their role is to deliver a range of work over numerous community bodies. It is not just a single body. Whether employed by the sponsoring local development company in the country the work is delivered across a range of community bodies, it is not necessarily dedicated to a particular community body in that the work of a participant on the RSS can extend across a range of bodies and a range of work during the course of a year. It also takes into account their farming activities. For example, they may work longer hours in winter time on the rural social scheme and shorter hours during the summer. I am not sure whether they had a shorter time on the farm this summer but generally it suits the social aspect of the smaller farmer.