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

I thank the Senator for consistently raising this matter.

Community employment, CE, is the largest employment activation and training programme administered by the Department of Social Protection. One of its main objectives is to provide work experience and targeted training interventions for long-term unemployed people to assist them to find new jobs. The CE programme is delivered by independent CE sponsoring authorities that receive public funding. The total expenditure for CE in 2020 was €341 million, while the budget for CE in 2021 is €362 million. There are currently 865 CE schemes in operation with 19,315 participants and 1,291 supervisors. CE schemes provide a range of services, including meals on wheels, social and healthcare, and all schemes provide valuable services to local communities and many have been particularly important over the past year in particular. CE scheme participants and supervisors are employees of the independent CE sponsoring authorities and the Department provides funding for participants and supervisors payroll. The Department is not the employer of CE participants or supervisors.

For several years CE supervisors and assistant supervisors have been seeking, through their union representatives, the allocation of Exchequer funding to implement the 2008 Labour Court recommendation relating to the provision of a pension scheme for CE supervisors who are employed by CE schemes. The issue of CE supervisors' pension provision was considered by a community sector high-level group chaired by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in 2017. A detailed scoping exercise was carried out with input from the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, on the potential costs of providing Exchequer support for the establishment of such a pension scheme for employees across the community and voluntary sector and not just for CE supervisors. This exercise estimated a significant potential cost to the State, depending on the numbers involved, if it covered all employees in this sector. This explains the complex and difficult context in which we are seeking to resolve the specific CE supervisor pension issue and accounts for the time taken to get to where we are today. In particular, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform had to have regard to any potential Exchequer exposure associated with dealing with the specific issue relating solely to CE supervisors arising from the Labour Court recommendation. Any proposal to resolve this specific issue can and will only apply to CE supervisors and assistant supervisors. In this context, officials from the Department and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform held discussions on proposals to progress and resolve this issue over the past number of months while having regard to the wider budgetary framework. Officials from the Department also held discussions with unions representing CE supervisors and assistant supervisors during the same period.

I am very pleased to report there was a successful outcome to discussions between both Departments late last week. On Friday last, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, and my colleague, the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys, reached agreement in principle on proposals to resolve this issue. This includes a financial package. This is a significant step forward and I thank all those involved in getting us to this stage.

The next step is for these proposals to be put to the trade unions representing CE supervisors and assistant supervisors. This will be done today. It would be premature to go into further details of what is proposed in advance of these plans being put to the unions but the Senator may rest assured the matter will be progressed without delay in order to bring this long-standing issue to a satisfactory conclusion.