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

I shall break my reply into two based on what the Deputy asked. The interdepartmental group is going to have its first meeting next week. Ms Simonetta Ryan has agreed to chair the group and we will have a number of meetings in the next few weeks. I will have recommendations arising from the meetings and the consultation with host CE companies. I will bring a memo to the Cabinet before the end of May.

I will explain the route I am taking. After the review in 2015 in which we categorised CE placements as training and activation and social inclusion, we continued to govern them with exactly the same rules we used for activation. How, in God's name, can we genuinely support a person in sheltered or supported employment if he or she is being governed by the same rules as those used in training somebody to gain work experience or undergoing a course for one year, which are to get people off the live register and into employment? That just does not work. We need two sets of rules in that regard.

We also need to look at where the rural social scheme sits. We need to look at Tús in that context. This will be done in the interdepartmental review. I cannot tell the Deputy the outcome of the deliberations on the Indecon report, but I can tell him what I told the Irish Local Development Network at its AGM in December. They are an integral part of the delivery of services in the State and have been for years and will be for years into the future.

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