Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister’s response and understand that one has to allow for throughput in these schemes, which we all accept. Deputies and Senators will have all received representations from administrators of schemes. If the business case is made and it stacks up to scrutiny, if there is no demand for another person to come onto a scheme and if the work being carried out has an exceptional impact locally, I ask the Minister to allow for some discretion and common sense, to use her own expression, and allow pragmatism to be built into the process. I accept the Minister’s response on having some discretion. We have always operated in this country on the basis of making allowances for grey areas and human circumstances. Not being too prescriptive about matters would be very useful.

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