Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

There are approximately 7,500 people on this scheme and expenditure on it was €48 million last year. I agree the back to education scheme is a very good one. It was designed to help those who have not worked for some time to improve their employability and job readiness. More than 5,000 people were on the scheme during the 2003-04 academic year who might have had an expectation of getting paid during the summer. I do not know, but perhaps if we reopened that discussion we might find that most of those got work during that summer and received good incomes.

I agree with the Deputy that we should help vulnerable people using the scheme. However, if we were to try to make back payments for a scheme that has finished, we would need to be very careful that this would not have legal ramifications or knock-on effects for other schemes that have finished. It would probably also be necessary to go through the 5,458 individual cases to check whether they had good jobs that paid them well during those summers. A cheque out of the blue from the Department of Social and Family Affairs might be the last thing they expect. I know the Deputy's heart is in the right place and I hope mine is too, but I will await legal advice on the situation.

Schemes change and stop all the time. When this happens it is not easy to go back and reopen the matter and start making payments. I acknowledge there was a legal case on this and that it won in court. That has implications we continue to study.

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