Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I wish to set the scene on this important issue. Over 400,000 people are out of work and the figure is likely to be 500,000 before the year is out. Most of these people have never stood in a dole office in their lives and never want to. Economists, market analysts and commentators - everybody except the Government - now understand that getting people back to work is a crucial part of the national recovery plan. Every so often a Minister pays lip service to this principle but never seems to do something about it. Everybody knows that the Departments of Social and Family Affairs and Enterprise, Trade and Employment must draft an action plan to help people hold onto the jobs they have or take people off the dole. As the saying goes, better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

Let us look at a case in County Galway, where a young married man with two children lost his job as a manual worker two months ago. His local community employment scheme had an impressive list of works that needed to be done in the parish. Interviews were held but, lo and behold, the position could not be filled. It was not because the numbers were not there but because there were so many ineligible to get a job on a FÁS scheme. Why were they ineligible? One must be in receipt of jobseeker's benefit for 12 months or jobseeker's allowance. In this case, my constituent was on the former.

Why would the State want to subject a person to a year on the dole in the company of 400,000 more people when he did not want to be on the dole and there was no need for it? I ask the Minister of State to bring some sense to this. Where there are people who want to work and are capable of doing a job on community employment schemes, the least the Government should do is ensure that people are eligible to work. How is it that the Government will not allow anyone drawing the dole in these terrible recessionary times, who wants to work on a community employment scheme, to do so? Leaving politics aside, could there be anything more appropriate than taking people off the dole?

I received an answer to a parliamentary question I tabled to the Tánaiste, telling me all the things the Government proposes to do to get people back to work. Although numerically my proposal is small enough, it is significant for the people concerned, the sponsors of the scheme, the development associations all over the country, those who want to get work done and those who know what wonderful work has been done on community schemes and related schemes in town and country. The Government has people on the dole drawing down money we do not have while there are jobs in the parish in which they live. The Government sees fit not to allow these people to work. It is the daftest situation I have seen in my time in the House.

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