Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The materials budget allocated to community employment schemes is severely inadequate due to the rise of insurance costs. Can the material allowance be increased to accommodate the increase in insurance costs and could we revert to a payment of €20 per week to remedy the cash flow deficit existing on community employment schemes?

What about the Jobs Ireland website, which caused a lot of confusion, hinders the application procedure for all community employment schemes and is no longer connected with the old FÁS application procedures, making the submissions list obsolete? How does the Jobs Ireland website factor into the application procedure now? One is required to have a high standard of education to operate computers and associated software, thereby contradicting the whole ethos.

Participants coming off Tús schemes are immediately eligible to commence on community employment schemes involving child care but with environmental schemes the participant must go back on payments for two weeks before becoming eligible for a community employment scheme longer than one year. Can the approach to all community employment schemes be harmonised? There is not enough awareness of community employment among the unemployed on the live register. How can this be rectified? Can there be a public awareness programme introduced on a pilot basis by the Department of Social Protection? The period of participation on child care schemes is three years. Environmental scheme participants are initially allocated just one year. Why can it not be the same? Why can it not be three years for everything? Let us have a level playing park. If some schemes are for one year and others are for three, one will of course go on the three-year one.

See this speech in context