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

The rural social scheme, RSS, is an income support scheme for farmers and fishers who are in receipt of specified social welfare payments and are underemployed in their primary occupation.  The scheme offers participants the opportunity to gain valuable work experience, while providing services to local communities. To qualify for the RSS, a person must be actively farming or fishing, and satisfy the means test assessment required to qualify for the farm assist payment.

In 2017, the total number of places on the RSS was increased to 3,350. On 21 December 2021, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys and I were pleased to announce several changes to the RSS and community employment schemes.  These changes included a provision to allow RSS participants who reach 60 years of age to remain on the scheme until they reach State pension age.  This will immediately benefit 390 existing RSS participants over 60 years of age who commenced on the scheme since 2017. They will now be able to stay on RSS until they reach State pension age.

The Department continually monitors all its income and employment support programmes to ensure they are achieving the best outcomes for participants and for the local communities in which they operate.  As the Deputy indicated, it is intended to undertake a specific review of the operation of the RSS in 2022.  This will be timely, as it will enable us to assess the potential impact of the changes introduced in 2017, in particular the introduction of the six-year time limit for new participants, from that date.  The first group of participants will not be leaving the RSS under the six-year rule until 2023.  The scope of this six-year rule has also been limited to those under 60 years since the start of the year.  It is timely to reassess its impact across all age cohorts in light of the current labour market context. It will be some time before the impact of the changes, implemented from 1 January 2022, on the RSS are fully known, so it is best to carry out the operational review later in 2022.  This will also allow time for schemes to return to normal, post-Covid operations.

It is not intended to carry out a specific review of Tús at this time.  An interdepartmental working group report, which examined the operation of employment schemes, was published in December.  The Department will again examine the recommendations in this report, including any impact on Tús, in light of the reforms introduced in December and the changed environment in which all schemes are operating following Covid and the changed labour market.  

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