John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome Dr. Sweeney. It was certainly a very informative presentation. I am aware the Deputies and Senators are rushing off, as am I, so I will be as brief as I can.

I did not see that report about schemes that are being wound down which Deputy O'Dea was talking about. We know, and the Minister is on the record as saying, that schemes such as Gateway are being wound down. He is looking at broadening the qualifying criteria for the community employment scheme. We have yet to see any proposals or any more information on that. We know that JobBridge has been wound down and stopped nine months ago. We are yet to see any replacement scheme for it. I note Dr. Sweeney's comments on media attention around the scheme, but certainly there was a very damning internal departmental report carried out that highlighted a number of deficiencies within that particular scheme. Is Dr. Sweeney aware of any pending scheme that the Department may be introducing? If he is, he might enlighten us because information is certainly not forthcoming from the Minister.

One other area I would like to home in on is job quality. That is critical. It is all well and good having these labour activation schemes but the survey on income and living conditions, which came out last week, highlighted serious difficulties. There are 105,051 people living in poverty who are within the workforce at the moment. There are 750,000 people who are living on incomes of less than €230 a week. The Minister has very publicly said that people need to stop dreaming about their ideal job or their dream job and get back into the workforce. The reality is that the dream job that people have trained and upskilled for and for which they have got qualifications is the job they want. We certainly need to look at how people are forced into these labour activation schemes at levels well below their qualifications.

There is also the issue of people within the workforce in low-paid employment where employers are using subsidies, such as the family income supplement, to complement wages. That has been echoed within this chamber. That is an abuse and employers are actively using that. There are major issues there. I am not sure as to how we are going to overcome that because, as Dr. Sweeney had said, "train first" is the default position. Many of these people are forced through privatised schemes such as JobPath. That entire sector has been privatised. They are forced into these jobs well below the skills levels they have. On that point, we see referrals to the local employment services down substantially over recent years and a lot more referrals to Turas Nua and Seetec, which are private companies. I would like to know if Dr. Sweeney has any views on that.