Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am a little confused. The extra top-up payment of €22 is for community employment, CE, and Tús participants. The RSS is an entirely different scheme, and it is genuinely an income support for farmers and fisherman. The governance of both of the schemes is not the same. If I can concentrate on the RSS for a second, prior to 1 February 2017, a person or a participant on the RSS could spend his or her entire working life on the scheme. This resulted in a lack of turnover of places for people. There were not enough places for all the eligible people to be able to come onto the scheme and stay on it, which resulted in there being no ebb and flow. There were people who were outside the scope of the scheme that we were not helping. Additional places obviously fix that. However, because of this, perhaps 50% of the RSS participants have been on the scheme for in excess of ten years. As a result, there were no real new opportunities for people, other than the extra few places that were awarded every year.

From 1 February 2017, we changed it so that a person had to be over 25 to be on the scheme. The change acknowledged that numerous other activation options were available for young people to counteract or to compensate those under 25 who were effectively being excluded. The entry of people aged 25 and over as participants in that scheme was introduced on and after 1 February 2017. People who were on the scheme beforehand obviously got to stay on it.

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