John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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11. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if the community sector high level forum has met since its meeting on 23 November 2017; the progress in regard to pension provisions for supervisors and assistant supervisors of community employment schemes; if reports from these meetings will be provided; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28777/18]

John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister will be aware of the Labour Court recommendation on the issue of pensions for community employment, CE, scheme supervisors and assistant supervisors. That recommendation is being discussed by the community sector high level forum. When did the forum last meet and what progress has been made to date on the recommendation?

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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An issue that has been under discussion by the community sector high level forum relates to CE supervisors and assistant supervisors, who have been seeking, through their union representatives, the allocation of Exchequer funding to implement a Labour Court recommendation. The group met in April 2017. My Department outlined its intention to conduct a detailed scoping exercise. A meeting of the forum then took place on Thursday, 23 November. A follow-up meeting took place on Friday, 15 December.

Formal arrangements to meet on the matter are the subject of deliberation between the parties and remain to be finalised.

The minutes of the meetings await formal approval by the parties to the forum and on such approval will be publicly available on my Department's website.  Previously approved minutes are on the website of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It continues to be the position that State organisations are not the employer of the particular employees concerned and that it is not possible for the State to provide funding for such a scheme. The employees in question are or were employees of companies, notwithstanding the fact that the companies concerned are, or were, in receipt of State funding.

John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister. I received most of what he read out before, either in debates in this House or in previous questions. I am specifically concerned that he indicates the discussions with the high-level forum. There have been no discussions in 2018. The last date he gave was December 2017. It seems that we are kicking the can down the road. There is no enthusiasm to get a conclusion with this issue. The high-level forum addressing the issue met on three occasions in 2017 that the Minister called out - he can correct me if I am wrong - and has not met this year.

I appeal to the Minister to ensure that the high-level forum meets soon. I find it difficult to understand why none of the minutes of meetings that took place in 2017 have been made available or published and why it is not the case that one meeting would approve the minutes of the previous meeting, which is a common practice. I appeal to the Minister with regard to the high-level forum. These people have given years of service and are in a situation where the Labour Court recommendation is not being acted on.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The difficulty we have with this is the massive costs relating to it that we outlined in response to the Private Members' motion from the Deputy's party. I have shared and indicated in the Dáil before that we estimate the potential cost to the State of this as being between €188 million and €347 million per annum. This is in addition to the call for the Exchequer to provide a lump sum payment for a pension, which, depending on the size of the settlement to those who look for it, could have a cost of up to €318 million.

Looking at the different points the Deputy has raised, such as why the minutes have not been approved, that is a matter for the forum and its participants. I agree that the minutes should be on the website and I will see what the difficulty is with it. Should the forum meet again, the challenge that we have is with the figures that I have shared with the Deputy. From all that I have learned about industrial relations in our public service, as the Deputy knows, and his party knew it when it was in Government which is why progress was not made on the matter, if the principle is accepted that the State has to be provide a pension for employees of an organisation, even if that organisation is not the State, the knock-on consequences of this are massive. That drives the figures I am sharing with the Deputy.

John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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To be brief, we have a problem. The Minister acknowledged there would be a high cost because of other groups. I acknowledge those issues. I do not have the breakdown of figures that the Minister has. On the other hand, the other side of the equation is that there is a Labour Court recommendation to be dealt with and it is not going away. The problem is that this high-level forum was established to address the Labour Court recommendation and it seems to have come to a standstill. There is no progress, no process and there is no outcome. People who have been community employment supervisors or assistant supervisors are effectively left in limbo. That is a most unsatisfactory position for them. I speak on their behalf when I present this.

I acknowledge there may be other implications. I have heard the Minister say it before. He quoted some figures today. The global figure has been quoted and it is quite a wide range, at half or double, whichever way one is looking at it. No breakdown of where that has come from has been made available to me, and I do not think it has been made available to this side of the House. I appeal to the Minister to ensure that the high-level forum convenes again, deals with the issue and publishes the minutes of its previous meetings. These people are entitled to that level of transparency on foot of the Labour Court recommendation that has been made.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I do not know what the difficulty is with the publication of minutes from the previous forum meetings. I will follow up on that. We have not been able to reach agreement on the matter because, while the Deputy is speaking strongly about those who are especially affected by this, if the State were to agree to funding pensions for organisations to which it has contributed but which are not of the State, where would we end up with the wide range of organisations involved in providing childcare services or section 39 organisations? We provide funding to all of those organisations but we do not pay for the entitlements of the employees. That is the issue that I and all of my predecessors have grappled with. Those predecessors go back to when the Deputy's party was in government, when this recommendation was issued. That is the cause of the challenge that we have had in making progress on this matter.