Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I am sorry that I missed the first part of the meeting. This place is a little crazy at the moment. We are like a school that has exams coming up next week. We are focusing on the studying but this week that is happening on the doorsteps of Ireland, not in the committee rooms, unfortunately. We are being pulled hither and thither.

This issue is terribly important. State bodies often function as if they are independent republics rather than the servants of the people. I have seen this over many years but it is getting worse. Everyone is trying to throw it over on the next person instead of recognising that there is only one Government and only one Oireachtas. All State bodies are answerable to us and we are all answerable to the people. The State should, therefore, have a coherent view. People should sit down at tables and sort this out no matter how long it takes. I am not as familiar with community employment schemes as I am with the RSS and Tús for very obvious reasons. When the RSS was introduced, it was a very particular scheme because we were employing farmers and farmers are not unemployed. They were great workers who had a lot of experience doing things. Most of them were experienced in doing farm work. They were very handy and their productivity was incredibly high in terms of scheme work. The issue of indemnity came up. I have double checked with the Department of Rural and Community Development and a very high insurance indemnity is required by the employer, that is, the partnerships. I think public liability insurance is set at €8 million or something and employers' liability insurance is also high. That is a condition of the scheme from the centre. That is my understanding and my memory of the RSS. The employers are, therefore, well insured. They are also funded by the State in that we tell them they must get these insurances but we give them money to buy them because otherwise the scheme will not work. I hope nothing has changed in that regard.

Local authorities have been stripped of permanent staff. I was in a constant battle with officials over the years about why they did not allow participants in community employment schemes to stay on for more than three years. I used to argue that the public parks here in Dublin, whether they were OPW parks like St. Stephen's Green and the Phoenix Park or local authority parks like Herbert Park, had full-time paid staff who would work until the age of 65 or 66. The RSS used to be a permanent scheme but the current Government unfortunately changed it to a six year scheme. The reason it was permanent was that farmers were not unemployed so job activation did not come into the game. The theory behind it was that we would get a cohort of workers.

No outdoor workers are available at present. That is certainly the case in County Galway and in many other counties as well. It is impossible to keep tar on the roads, not to mention cutting bushes, tidying up grass and working on Tidy Towns activities. I will give my view of what would happen if all of the RSS, Tús and CE workers were taken out of rural Ireland over the summer months. The grass would grow, every football pitch would be covered in three feet of grass and every town and village would end up looking like a ragbag. Fáilte Ireland and the public would go absolutely crazy. Many public spaces are owned by communities in the area where I live. If all of those community spaces were allowed to go wild, if litter was not picked up and similar work was not undertaken, people would soon be shocked by how much we rely on these schemes to keep Ireland looking the way it does.

The other advantage we would derive from being able to keep these schemes in operation for longer is that we could train our people. They could get the Safe Pass as well other similar qualifications and renew them, but not as frequently. A Tús scheme, however, has to start afresh every year. Imagine what it is like to employ people in that situation. All of the agencies need to get together and agree on what it is they need. The State will have to pay for that because nobody else will do it. The reality is, however, that the State - the Oireachtas, the public service and the people - will be getting the services of people who are more than willing to work at a very low cost. The current rate is €20 in addition to the welfare payment.

We also need national guidelines - based on Safe Pass or whatever - setting out what everybody is required to do to go out on the road. It is crazy to have short-term workers for a year and then be required to train an entirely new group the following year. The length of time for which it is possible to stay on the scheme has a major bearing on the efficiency of this entire operation. The RSS scheme has some permanent employees as well as some who are retained for six years. It is at least possible to have those people for six years. If they are trained and get the Safe Pass, the only renewal necessary is that which a local authority worker would also do to upgrade his or her skills.

We need this situation resolved in the context of insurance and other requirements. There has to be a clear message that if the prescriptions regarding signage and other similar stipulations are followed, then these workers will be able to work adjacent to roads. Many private contractors already do that, as do local authority workers. I cannot understand why these people cannot do that as well as long as they adhere to the same standards. All of this has to be paid for by the State. There is no other option because there is no other source of income. Look at the public service being provided in return and compare it with the same service being provided by full-time employees in every city in Ireland. We will see that we are getting absolutely great value for money.

I missed the first part of the meeting. What processes are in place to get all of different interests represented here around a table? I suggest that Fáilte Ireland be involved, particularly as it has a major interest in ensuring that we do not remove all these people from the equation. If the latter were to happen, everybody would be shouting and roaring and asking what the hell has gone wrong with Ireland. Every village and town would become an utter disgrace if we took these workers away.