Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

On community employment schemes, as the Deputy will know, since level 5 restrictions were introduced in October of last year, contracts have been extended until at least 31 March of this year. We will be monitoring the situation closely. We are open to extending it beyond that. I will also clarify that there is to be no sudden cliff edge when contracts come towards an end. The local community development officers in the Department will stagger the end of contracts to make sure that services are not impacted. It is fair to say that more communication and flexibility on the ground is needed. The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and I met 25 of the sponsor organisations during the week. There was a lot of good feedback and back and forth. Recently, one of the constraints has been that capacity at a local level among Intreo and community development officers is down to 30% because of staff being pulled in a different direction. I expect that staffing level to increase again and that engagement between sponsors and community development officers will increase over time as the economy opens up.

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