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

The proposal I am making in regard to community employment schemes is to relax the rules and widen the pool of people who can qualify. If there are supervisors who are opposed to that, it is news to me. I have come across supervisors who believe it does not go far enough but I have not come across anyone who is actively opposed to the measure I am putting in place, which is to widen the pool of people available for community employment.

JobPath is a service to which people are referred for a year. There are many who could qualify for community employment or Tús schemes before JobPath but, for whatever reason, they choose not to participate on them. There are many who spend a year on JobPath, who do not find a full-time job afterwards and who are then eligible for community employment but who, for whatever, reason, choose not to participate. What I am trying to do is have my Department connect a bit better with community employment schemes and refer to them the list of those whom we call JobPath returnees, the people who do not find full-time employment after a year with Seetec or Turas Nua. It is a matter of trying to get them connected with the community employment scheme. The supervisors fill those vacancies. If one thinks about it, one realises there are probably nearly 40,000 JobPath returnees who have not found full-time employment at this stage. This is much more than the number of vacancies. We need to connect a bit better.

See this speech in context