Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

When responsibility for community employment schemes was transferred to the Department of Social Protection, it was intended to spend some of the €5 billion we paid people to do nothing, which was bad for their health and well-being, on providing people who were out of work with opportunities to make a useful contribution to society. In other words, we viewed people not as a burden but as a resource. The Government appears to think otherwise.

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