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

I will double check. We were certainly in government at the time in any event. It started off as a different scheme, called social employment, and then became community employment.

CE has huge value. It has a duel value in that it provides employment and training opportunities for people, and also provides important community services as well. The number of people on CE schemes stands at 21,956. That is down by approximately 2% on last year, which makes sense when the economy is growing, when there is more employment and when there are fewer people who are unemployed. As unemployment goes up and employment falls, the numbers increase.

On the issue of the CE supervisors, I am advised that they have been seeking, through their trade unions, the allocation of Exchequer funding to implement a Labour Court recommendation which was issued on 22 July 2008 relating to the provision of a pension scheme. The CE scheme supervisors are not employees of the State or the Government. They are employees of private companies in some cases and of community and voluntary sector bodies in others. The taxpayer, therefore, is not responsible for funding the pensions of such employees, even when the companies involved are reliant on State funding for their operations. The same would apply, for example, to commercial entities that do work for the State, to individual contractors who do work for the State and to semi-State companies as well. As the Deputy will know, Labour Court findings are made in respect of employers. As the employer in this instance was not the State-----

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