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

CE schemes and Tús do not constitute regular employment. It is not to say they are not valuable. They are very valuable and I have many such schemes also in my constituency. I know their value and they do involve a lot of real work. It is, however, a different thing to say the Tús scheme is real employment. It is not. It is an employment activation scheme where the State provides a form of employment for a person on a part-time basis. I know that the People Before Profit Alliance has been critical of the live register figures and the unemployment statistics produced by the Government, on the basis that it does not include people who are on CE and Tús. Even in the Deputy's own party there must be a view that it is not regular employment.

To answer the other part of the Deputy's question, we do not want people to chop and change between services and schemes. That does not work for us administratively and it is not the right way to approach labour activation. If a person is on a scheme or with a service, they should stick with that and not change to another one until they have completed it. If somebody has a start date within four weeks with CE or Tús, then they can take that up, even if they are referred to JobPath.

See this speech in context