Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

These cuts to CE schemes must be set against today's announcement in the Finance Bill that the Government will give special tax breaks to extraordinarily highly paid, high flying executives in the financial and corporate sector so that they can pay less tax on their unbelievably high earnings. It is okay to do that because, apparently, it will bring us jobs. On the other hand, the Government is lashing into disadvantaged communities, because that is where CE schemes provide services. They provide services and jobs for people in the most disadvantaged communities. In many cases they are the glue that holds communities together, providing child care, after-school care, outreach projects to young people, literacy projects and all sorts of things. They help out where there are high levels of long-term unemployment and poverty and where people need these services most.

These cuts are stupid beyond belief. Community employment workers provide vital social, education and health services. The full going rate for those jobs would be considerably more than the €208 per week these workers are paid. For the most part, they do these jobs because they want to provide services for their local communities.

This is a particular attack on single parents. It makes me sick to hear the Government talk about labour activation when it is simultaneously taking away incentives for single parents to get back into the workforce while serving their local communities. The Government should be ashamed of itself for its double standards and it should reverse these cuts immediately.

See this speech in context