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

I know of a scheme where the supervisor is being forced to retire in April. The position has been advertised for over a month but no applicant has come forward. Can that person stay on? That is the very simple question. Community employment schemes provide essential services across the towns, villages and parishes of this country, urban and rural, and they are publicly funded. To create what I term a kind of "constructive corporate veil" between the Government and the group carrying on the service is a nonsense. This has to be broken down. It is the same thing that is going on with the pensions. It is cowboy stuff. If companies outside were doing it, we would call them cowboys. All Governments, including the one of which I was a member, have been cowboys in this regard. They have tried to fool people.

There are 44 supervisors on community employment schemes who are aged between 65 and 66 and I want to know if they can continue to work beyond that age. Can they? One cannot have one rule for one group and another rule for another group. It would require a simple administrative decision for the Minister to change this. It is the right thing to do. The Taoiseach said it was up to the employer, but the corporate veil or Chinese wall involved, whatever one calls it, is a nonsense that must stop. Community employment supervisors are employees doing valuable work but we do not treat them as valuable employees.

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