Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Labour)

In a healthy, free and open democracy parliamentary opposition is to be valued. It is a necessity. Governments ought to be kept in check and have their policies scrutinised by the Opposition. In that respect, I welcome the motion tabled by Sinn Féin. One cannot demand that the criticisms of the Opposition always be constructive - that would be unrealistic - but one can hope they would often be responsible, particularly in times of crisis such as this, the worst financial crisis in the history of the State.

When we entered government approximately 12 months ago, one could have best described the situation as being akin to a building on fire. It is difficult to sit on this side of the House and receive criticism from those who started the fire and who now have the luxury of absenting themselves from debate, while enjoying the criticism and conflagration that surrounds the issue. It can be difficult to take it from those on the other side of the House who proposed the motion. We understand there is much political capital to be gained on the issue, but it is important to have an open, honest and transparent debate in that respect.

I commend the Minister who has approached the issue with great sensitivity. She needed no lessons from her Labour Party backbenchers on the importance of community employment schemes. She has spoken to the stakeholders, participants and, most importantly, communities. Every one of the stakeholders agrees with her because all the community employment schemes to which I have spoken in recent months have acknowledged that we need to discuss their future viability.

Supervisors have given me examples of expensive training modules provided by private training contractors when the very same training was provided in local VEC training centres. Tuam and district mental health services cancelled a €3,000 computer training event to be offered by a former FÁS manager over two days. He was to be paid €1,500 a day for providing ECDL training. The previous funding system for community employment schemes encouraged scheme management to spend the maximum allocation rather than focus on the achievement of value for money or the true requirements in training scheme participants.

On 1 January community employment schemes were brought under the auspices of the Department of Social Protection, having previously been the responsibility of FÁS. While it was set up with the best of intentions by a previous Labour Party Minister, under the previous Government schemes failed to properly seek value for money. The reforms sought by the Minister amount to nothing more than each sponsoring committee properly costing a business case for the funds receives. Most schemes of which I am aware are already in a position to do this and have no difficulty with being transparent and offering a valid case for the social impact made by the scheme and a business case for additional funding. That is what we call prudential government - protecting the taxpayer. The Minister aims to balance the need to adopt a prudential and responsible approach to the spending of taxpayers' money with the need to protect the social aspect of community employment schemes for communities. The current budget allocation for the scheme is in excess of €315 million, which represents a significant commitment by the Government to the scheme and communities.

The recently announced ceiling of €1,000 per participant in 2012 will provide the necessary reassurance that the Government is committed to communities and community employment schemes. A block grant system for future schemes will focus on the real cost of running the service offered by schemes and encourage communities to take the work seriously and be responsible in terms of sharing costs. Under these reforms, economic necessity has ended up aiding the virtue of a Government which is cautious in using taxpayers' money. The review process is under way and sponsors of schemes will encourage the engagement that will require reforms in terms of the shared services to which Deputy Spring referred. We need reform to have due regard for and a duty to ensure prudence for both communities and scheme participants. We can identify the capacity of schemes to collectively negotiate bank charges, overheads, rates and other charges.

I wish to give an example of where savings can be made. There are two schemes within a two mile radius of my home town. One pays a public liability insurance premium of €3,400 in a brand new build facility. An older scheme in a working, older environment is paying €1,400. In terms of some expenditure items, there are significant ways for us to secure efficiencies and continue to effect reform and change so that we might protect community employment scheme supervisors and the social impact of their schemes.

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