Pádraic McCormack (Galway West, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to raise this matter on the Adjournment. It concerns the three-year rule for community employment schemes but only in those schemes relevant to disadvantaged people. For example, in Galway city there is an independent living group which had 18 employees of community employment schemes. This week four of those people reached the three-year limit and had to terminate their employment on the scheme, with the result that four people with physical disabilities no longer have personal assistants. The Minister of State will say that the independent living group can employ four more people, but that is not so easy. First, one must advertise for them and, second, it is very difficult to find people willing to take up the position of personal assistant. A personal assistant who works with a disadvantaged person, or one who uses a wheelchair, for 19.5 hours per week over three years develops a relationship with that person and knows what to do and how to do it.

The Galway case is only one example. Every year over the next three years the independent living group will lose 18 personal assistants. As a result the people employed on the community employment scheme will return to unemployment assistance and receive €25 per week less than they received on the community employment scheme. For the sake of €25 the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment is ceasing the employment of those people on a community employment scheme. Through the Minister of State, I ask the Tánaiste to exempt people working as personal assistants on community employment schemes. The work they do is very valuable to themselves and to those whom they assist, enabling them to lead independent lives in their own homes or in a community home.

In the Galway example the four who have lost their assistants must return to institutional care or to their families and the four assistants will be unemployed. The independent living group has advertised for people to take up those positions but cannot get them immediately, if at all, because they must pass security checks and be trained.

This rule strikes at the people least able to defend themselves. I cannot understand why the Tánaiste proceeded with the three-year rule, which came into effect in 2003, for people in this position. They do the most valuable work that any employees of a community employment scheme could do in looking after people and enabling them to lead independent lives, in institutional care or in their own homes, as happens in some cases. I appeal to the Minister of State to present the case to the Tánaiste.

It is not fair to send in the Minister of State because he has a prepared script that may not respond to the points I raise. This is one of the frustrations of raising matters on the Adjournment. The Minister of State brings in a prepared script which he or she must put on the record. I want the Minister of State to ask the Tánaiste to exempt people employed in community employment schemes who work as personal assistants to those with disabilities because it is impossible to replace the expertise and comradeship they have established with the person whom they are assisting. Those people are now being penalised. A wheelchair user who had a personal assistant was able to do his or her shopping and go to the cinema or elsewhere. However, he or she will no longer be able to do that because the three year rule dictates that the personal assistant must be sacked. Four personal assistants had their employment terminated in Galway this week.

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