Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le Fine Gael as ucht an rún seo a chur síos. We are discussing an issue which is of major concern to anybody who meets people every day. The question of employment is central to our work. There are two elements. Regarding the creation of employment in the private sector, one has to create the circumstances which are conducive to employment. The State cannot create employment in the private sector, but it can create the circumstances. As someone who was involved in creating employment on the ground for years, I believe one needs access to money, ideas and support for those ideas.

I am constrained by time. I wish to focus on two schemes run by my Department. One is the rural social scheme which has 2,600 participants. Technically, it does not take people from the live register because they receive farm assist and are not classed as unemployed. The reality in rural Ireland is that small farmers who had jobs return to farm assist because it is more beneficial from a means test point of view. The rural social scheme is doing very good work. Even though the budget has tightened, I decided to keep the same number of people on the scheme while trying to devise ways of sustaining the scheme and, if possible, examining innovative ways of growing it.

On the community services programme, last year we increased the number of people on the scheme by 300 and we now have 2,700 people on it. We also approved some 80 different organisations for the scheme. Funding was cut this year as part of the general effort to try to bring some fiscal stability to the State. I decided to cut the non-material grant to all schemes because many of them have very high reserves. Other schemes have very good earning capacity. Many of them are involved in tourism projects and so on. There are some, particularly those in RAPID areas, whose earning capacity is very small. We told the schemes concerned that they could make a case for funding to keep them going and we would look at their situation on a case-by-case basis.

This was a much more rational approach to sustaining the levels of employment than leaving the non-wage grant in place in every scheme and cutting the numbers of people on the scheme. Between 40 and 50 different groups have made a case to the Department regarding funding and I understand the first case will be decided on this week. It is my intention to ensure that any group which needs funding gets it. In many cases groups have the ability to earn more money because community services programmes are meant to have a revenue stream from the private sector. Many of the schemes comprise tourism projects in rural areas which charge people to see attractive tourism features. Therefore, such scheme will be able to meet the objectives of the scheme.

Ba mhaith liom tagairt a dhéanamh don scéim forbartha tuaithe, rural develop programme. Cruthóidh sin fostaíocht do 2,500 duine sna ceantair thuaithe in Éirinn. Leis sin, tá deiseanna iontacha don phobal tuaithe. Bhí comhdháil an tseachtain seo caite faoi seo agus tá deiseanna thar na bearta ann ach caithfidh na comhlachtaí Leader deontais mhóra a cheadú mar ní féidir fostaíocht a chruthú le deontais de €3,000.

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