Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have an open mind on it and the issue of older workers arises frequently in this context. It is also an issue for younger people. I always get Tús and CE mixed up on the minimum age criteria. The minimum age is 25 for one of the schemes and 21 for the other. We have young people who have spent a year on JobPath and have not got a job. It would make more sense for them to move to CE after this than to return to JobPath. I am considering this as a possible change. Perhaps this is not true, but I am sometimes told in some parts of the country that people who would have had small businesses fixing locks, doing odd jobs around houses or cutting grass have lost some of their business to RSS and CE. I have no numbers to quantify the extent to which this is a real problem. However, if we massively expanded these schemes, we would have to bear it in mind.

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