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

There are 2,969 people on the RSS at present and 1,493 of them will not be impacted by the six-year rule. There are also 381 vacancies. It is not impacting capacity and there is spare capacity there, but I take the Deputy's point about the six-year rule, it has been raised with me. It is very much on our radar in terms of looking at it as part of the review. There were also changes brought in with the budget which will broaden the eligibility for income disregard for argi-environmental schemes. They do not come into play until June but once they do, we will start a more formal process. I am doing a lot of ground work in terms of assessing what the opportunities are in relation to the rural social scheme because I believe it has a future. We may also need to look at how we ensure it has a future in the process of the review.

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