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

I hear what the Minister of State is saying. I welcome that he has obviously had a lot of engagement with CE schemes. That is really welcome. However, there is clearly a problem here. The last time I raised this issue, there were 1,400 vacancies in jobs available in CE. Before that, there were 1,200. Now there are over 2,500 CE vacancies with people looking for people to join them on CE. Something is definitely wrong here. I met with a disability group in Roscommon - I have raised this before - and they cannot get people to fill places. They cannot fill their CE places. I have met other groups as well that have CE vacancies. They are not getting referrals. There definitely is problem. I have never seen over 2,500 CE vacancies advertised online before. There is a problem and it needs to be addressed. I agree, people perhaps in their 50s or 60s want to be on that scheme. It means a lot to them to be there in the community doing something. They may have nothing else and the six-year rule should be looked at.

See this speech in context