Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I recognise the difficulty that community employment, CE, schemes are having in filling places, which is why I made the announcement a couple of weeks ago to allow participants of JobPath to participate in CE and Tús. From 1 June, anybody who is currently engaged with JobPath can also apply for CE places or Tús places. I do not think that will solve the problem, however, because I have not had large numbers of people on JobPath banging down my door demanding CE places. We will still have difficulty recruiting people to CE jobs while we are sending away people who want to be on CE. That makes no sense to me whatsoever.

The only commitment I can give the Senator is that I am going to fix this. There is no obvious fix for me right now but I will continue to work until I fix it. I ask the Senator for the name of the person who has come to the end of the three-year service. I will have a look into it for him.