Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

When the interviews take place in FÁS and with the Department of Social and Family Affairs, a very significant percentage of interviewees do not come back for a second interview and go back to employment. That has been a feature of our plan and a very effective part of it.

On the other hand, in the broad area of disability and unemployment, we must do better than we have done in the last decade. In the time of the Celtic tiger, between 4% to 4.5% of our people were unemployed. The challenge for us is to determine what we need to do to get those who have been almost permanently unemployed into the labour market. There is an interdepartmental group, including the assistant secretaries of my Department and the Department of Social and Family Affairs, working on that issue. It is dealing with issues of poverty traps, secondary benefits, medical cards and so forth and aims to incentivise people to return to employment. I accept that further work is needed in this area.

On the issue of the community employment programmes, we cannot have community employment forever. There are approximately 22,000 places on community employment schemes. We must recognise that a considerable amount of community employment schemes are now social support services or community support services. The scheme has, over time, turned out to be a very good avenue for people with disabilities to obtain reasonable work experience which they were unable to obtain in the mainstream labour market. I am examining the community employment issue in that context.

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