Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am taking this Commencement matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty.

Community employment is the largest employment and training programme administered by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. The CE programme was initially established under the aegis of FÁS to enhance the employability of long-term unemployed people by providing work experience and training opportunities for them within their communities.Its objectives continue to be to provide valuable work experience, including targeted training interventions for the long-term unemployed, and help to prepare them to gain employment.

The CE programme is delivered throughout the community and voluntary sector by independent community employment sponsoring bodies that receive public funding. Participants and supervisors in CE schemes are employees of those independent community employment sponsoring bodies. The Department provides funding in respect of the participants and supervisors' payroll. The Department is not the employer of CE participants or supervisors and such employees are not public servants.

In July 2008, the Labour Court recommended that an agreed pension scheme should be introduced for CE supervisors and assistant supervisors and that such a scheme should be adequately funded by FÁS, which was then responsible for the community employment scheme programme. FÁS was not a party to the LRC case.

On the subject of Exchequer-funded pension provision for CE supervisors and assistant supervisors, the community employment scheme programme is not operated by public bodies or State organisations. Therefore, the State cannot extend pension entitlements or funding to employees of private bodies in a manner that would set a precedent in respect of other employees in private companies that provide services on behalf of the State. CE supervisors and assistant supervisors comprise just one group within the wider community and voluntary sector, and any provision of State funding for such a scheme in respect of those employees could potentially give rise to claims for similar schemes across the broader sector.

The issue of pension provision for CE supervisors was considered by a high-level community sector group chaired by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in 2017. A range of stakeholders, including unions representing CE supervisors, were represented in the group. A detailed scoping exercise was undertaken and included input from the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service on the potential cost of providing Exchequer support for a pension scheme across the wider community and voluntary sector. As Senator Murnane O'Connor has outlined, this exercise estimated a potential cost to the State of between €188 million and €347 million per annum depending on the numbers involved. The scoping exercise clearly illustrated that it is not feasible for the Exchequer to provide pension funding in the amount required.

Earlier this year, the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection undertook to engage with unions representing CE supervisors to address issues of concern to their members, and this process is ongoing. All parties to the discussions agreed that the detail of the discussions undertaken by the group should remain confidential until the process had been completed. The Minister is committed to seeking a resolution to this difficult impasse, which I must emphasise has significant and tangible consequences for the Exchequer. She is actively pursuing options to seek a resolution to the impasse.