Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate on the Gateway so-called local authority labour activation scheme. It should be called the local authority slave labour scheme. It amazes me that somebody in the Department sat down and came up with that. To insult unemployed people by forcing them to take up a so-called job with a local authority, which is supposed to be an activation scheme, for €1 an hour on top of their social welfare payment is a disgrace. The type of work identified within the local authorities includes village enhancement schemes, landscaping, tourism ambassadors, control of animals, and libraries yet there is no training or education value in that. What does an unemployed person who is unfortunate enough to be selected for one of these schemes and takes it up get out of it? They get €20 a week for 22 months for participating in this scheme.

This Government should lift the embargo on local authorities to allow them employ staff. In my town of Killybegs the library closed two years ago because the librarian retired and the council could not replace her because of the embargo. The library services were withdrawn from the community because of this embargo operated by the Government. How can somebody be put to work in a library without training them in how to do the job, which would ensure they get value out of it? There is no training or education budget as part of this scheme.

An unemployed person came into my office last week and the first question they asked was why the only jobs advertised in Donegal are community employment, CE, schemes or internships. That is a good question, and it shows that this Government's jobs policy is defunct in terms of rural areas when all that unemployed people can look for is a CE scheme or an internship. They now have the added advantage of considering the Gateway scheme also.

This is the type of meaningless employment activation scheme to which this Government is reduced. The only reason it can be introducing it is to massage the figures on the live register. Much was made of the fact that the live register figures have dropped below 12% in recent weeks but there are over 85,000 people on so-called labour activation schemes who are not included in the live register figures. People are in internships or on gateway schemes for no pay. They are still unemployed people and they should be included in the figures.

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