Colm Burke (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for taking time out of her busy schedule to deal with this matter. The issue I raise is the community employment scheme and the current rules that apply. The particular one I raise is where someone has reached 66 years of age and he or she is no longer entitled to continue on in the community employment scheme. There is a problem now in community employment schemes around the country. At least seven or eight community associations have contacted me. They have people who are very good but they are retiring. In one case, the person has reached 66 years of age while in other cases it is because the people have fulfilled the three year time period and they are not entitled to renew it because they are under 60 years of age. We are concerned because these are community associations that are providing a very valuable service to the local community in all sorts of ways. The person who had reached 66 years of age was a chef and was providing meals for elderly people in the community a number of days a week but it is not possible to get someone to replace him. Many community associations are not able to get people to replace those who are retiring.

I ask for a review of this position. We are extending the time a person can stay working in the public service after the retirement age but we have not made the same facility available to people who are employed under a community employment scheme. Can a review be undertaken and can we make the necessary amendments to accommodate these voluntary organisations that are providing a very valuable service?

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Senator. He already knows that the retirement arrangements announced last year by Government that affected public service employees have only been introduced to increase the compulsory retirement age from 65 years for certain categories of public servants. The Government also agreed that in advance of the legislation coming into effect, interim arrangements could be introduced for serving public servants, enabling those reaching 65 years of age to remain in place, if they want to, until they reach the age of eligibility for the contributory State pension, which is currently 66 years of age. Our community employment, CE, participants and supervisors are employees of the limited companies for which they work and they receive public funding in the community and the voluntary sector. Therefore, my Department is not the employer of the CE participants or the supervisors. Therefore, such employees are not public sector workers.

In general, eligible participants can remain on CE until the working day before their birthday at which they reach the State pension age, which is currently 66 years, provided they have not exceeded their overall lifetime CE participation limit of six years, or seven years for those in receipt of a qualifying disability linked social welfare payment.

A CE supervisor can remain on a CE scheme until the working day before his or her birthday at which they reach State pension age. The age at which the pension becomes available to a person, as per section 7 of the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2011 is as follows: 66 years of age for those people born on or before 1 January 1955; 67 years of age for those born on or after 1 January 1955; and 68 years for those born on or after 1 January 1961.

As per the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2011, the State pension's age will increase to 67 on 1 January 2021 and to 68 on 1 January 2028. As the age limit for participation on a CE scheme is linked to the age at which the State pension becomes available, CE participants and supervisors will be able to remain until the working day before their birthday, at which stage they reach the State pensionable age, provided they have not exceeded their overall lifetime period of participation of six or seven years, respectively.

I refer to the specific case the Senator raised. While I am not in an position to offer an extension to the particular gentleman the Senator is speaking about, I am very concerned that the continuity of the service is maintained in the Senator's area. I would be grateful if he give me the details privately of the person, the scheme and the service being provided.

I have been somewhat frustrated in the last year in this job of not being able to change and relax what I feel are the participation rules within CE. The reason is that I probably naïvely thought I could have a set of rules for the people who are in the activation role within our CE schemes and a different set of rules for participation for people who were probably ideally involved in a social inclusive or public and community service-type role. I started to do an analysis of the over 900 schemes, thinking they would easily slot in to one category or the other. Unfortunately, I have discovered that no one scheme slots into any nice niche category because they all provide a range of both activation and social inclusion.

It is fair to govern an entire CE scheme on the basis of activation rules when they provide such a huge and valuable public service through social inclusion with a very large number of people who would not be able to work or participate in their communities in any other format. I also mention self-esteem, sanity and all the other good, positive mental health-related reasons with allowing someone to continue to contribute in his or her community and society. These are the reasons I feel we should have a separate set of rules that govern the social inclusive part. As the funding for the schemes that comes from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is totally based on activation, I am finding it difficult to square that circle but I will not stop until I square that circle.

Be assured that I recognise the huge value our CE schemes offer for a variety of reasons and that there is need for different adjudication for different roles within those CE schemes. I will not stop until I find a way to address that issue.

Colm Burke (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister. The other scheme I raised is a community organisation that has over 46 acres of community grounds because there are lot of different organisations working there, all on a voluntary basis. The person on community employment supervises the maintenance and does all that work. Now his time is up. He has done his three years and it cannot be extended, as I understand it. The big problem is that the scheme cannot get anyone to replace him. It has tried extremely hard over the last six months to line up someone but it cannot get anyone. The scheme is concerned that it will not have someone employed and it would not have the funding to employ someone directly because everything it does is voluntary.If they get a grant for €1,000 they will borrow another €5,000 to get the project done so it is really a challenge for community organisations right around the country.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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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.