John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Community employment plays a vital role in towns and villages across the State and has done so since it was first established in 1994. Its two-strand approach makes it unique compared with all other schemes, providing individuals with employment and training while providing much-needed services to the community at the same time. Often they are services that would not otherwise be available. I commend everyone who has made the effort to come here this evening, the supervisors and assistants, to listen to this crucial debate.

CE schemes work along with important organisations such as Enable Ireland, the Simon Communities, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Tidy Towns groups the length and breadth of the State, the Cope Foundation, the Brothers of Charity and many others. CE participants are the people who deliver meals to elderly citizens in their homes, they are the people who care for young and old people with disabilities, getting them in and out of bed, dressing them and preparing their meals. They are the people who drive the elderly into town to collect their pension, do their shopping or allow them to visit the doctor. They are the people who look after our young people in creches and after-school clubs. They take care of local sporting grounds, maintaining them so that others can enjoy them. These are the very people to whom this Government is denying a pension, despite the knowledge that without CE supervisors and assistant supervisors these services would not exist and our whole communities would suffer.

There are cases of people who have been CE supervisors and assistant supervisors for 20 and 30 years. I have spoken to many of them here this evening. They are watching this debate in the Gallery and in the AV room, and some are outside the front gates of Leinster House on Kildare Street. Despite their years of commitment, they are being denied a pension by this Government.

These people have given their entire working lives to CE schemes, to the benefit of communities they serve. It is really unfortunate that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, and the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, could not come to this Chamber this evening to look the very people who provide this essential service throughout the State in the eyes and tell them that they are digging in their heels. They have tabled an amendment to this critical motion to ensure the Government will do nothing.

That is absolutely despicable. The 2008 Labour Court recommendation which ordered that an agreed pension scheme should be put in place for community employment, CE, supervisors and assistant supervisors has unfortunately been ignored by Fine Gael, the Labour Party and, indeed, Fianna Fáil. In 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 they unfortunately chose not to implement the recommendations. Here we are almost ten years later. We are supposedly in economic recovery, but this recovery has not been felt by CE supervisors and assistant supervisors. That needs to happen. The Government needs to recognise the valuable work carried out by CE schemes across this State. If the Government is genuine in its compliments - and compliments is all they are, not substance - we need it to follow through. We need it to put this pension scheme in place. We also need it to withdraw its amendment, to stop digging its heels in and to give our supervisors the pensions they deserve for the phenomenal work they are doing in managing these schemes across the length and breadth of the State.

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