Mark Duffy (Fine Gael)

I welcome to the distinguished guests in the Visitors Gallery. This morning, I raise an issue that has an effect on community groups across the country, which is the lack of pay parity between Tús and rural social scheme, RSS, workers and their equivalent community employment scheme supervisors.The Tús scheme and the RSS are an incredible lifeline and the lifeblood of rural communities. They do brilliant work supporting GAA clubs, community groups and village and town enhancements, but there is a total lack of parity in the pay and remuneration for the supervisors of Tús and the RSS. The supervisors of both of those schemes are paid approximately 50% more per week than the participants but the participants generally work only about half of the week, so the remuneration is almost the same. When we take into account social welfare benefits at different stages that are cost-of-living measures or increased payments at, say, Christmas time, the supervisors do not receive those same benefits. They are not being treated fairly, therefore, and are not being looked after in terms of the cost of living or inflation over the past seven years. which has negatively impacted on them. If we compare them with community employment, CE, scheme supervisors, an assistant supervisor gets paid just €300 less per year than a supervisor on a Tús scheme or RSS. There is a huge disparity, therefore, in pay for both Tús and RSS supervisors compared with that of community employment supervisors. It should be brought into line. I would welcome a debate with the Minister on it. Like I said, they do incredible work on social outreach and supporting vulnerable members of our communities, but they need to be remunerated and looked after for that. It is a small cohort of people who do exceptional work and we need to support them. I would welcome a debate on it.