Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I doubt that the 60 people in the facilitator service can deal with the level of unemployment we currently have. People must sign off social welfare when they go on FÁS courses and the 44% of people who do not manage to get employment from the courses must then sign back on.

I have heard from many people working within both FÁS and the Department of Social and Family Affairs that this must be changed. A person gets the same payment while on the FÁS course as on jobseeker's allowance, and there is an extra payment for child care that can still be paid by FÁS. Some of the FÁS courses are three, four or five weeks long and people must go through the entire process of signing off and getting the payment from FÁS. When the person is finished the FÁS course, he or she must go back to the Department's staff — who are inundated as it is — and go through the process of signing back on.

I am not sure how many people within the Department are allocated to that process but it is a sizable number. I know of a pilot project near my locality, although I am not sure it was official, where FÁS was in communication with the Department. Two out of three local social welfare offices agreed that the people involved could stay signing on. This eliminated all the paperwork that was taking up staff time and which makes people consider if it is worth doing a FÁS course because a process will have to be gone through and the person may have to wait for a payment at the end. Some people are not willing to take that chance. Will the Minister examine the issue and see if the practice could be changed?

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