Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I welcome the engagement he has had with CE schemes. I imagine that the matters raised in that engagement included the issues concerning the over 55s, specifically people leaving schemes and services not receiving the referrals they need to fill places. It is probably a good few months since I last checked but as of now, there are 2,406 vacancies on CE schemes advertised on the website. That is a huge number of vacancies.

I met a disability group in County Roscommon a couple of weeks ago. It has 26 CE posts and can fill only 18. It said the reason is that it is not getting the referrals. The service is a crucial disability service for County Roscommon and it serves people beyond that county. There were 34,000 CE participants in 2015 and there are 21,492 in 2021. There is a problem here.

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