Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for attending. I understand that she proposes to establish an interdepartmental group to examine the future of community employment, CE, schemes with a view to ring-fencing social inclusion places and allowing services in communities to be maintained. Fianna Fáil is a strong supporter of, and advocate for, CE schemes. One of the first schemes was started in my constituency. These programmes not only benefit participants but also the community by providing essential services.

One of the stakeholders that relies on these schemes, Graiguecullen Parish CLG, contacted me because it had requested a meeting with the Minister to share its concerns about the scheme as it stands and its ideas for improving the scheme for all concerned. However, it never heard from or had a meeting with the Minister. An approach was adopted in 2017 whereby all CE placements were categorised into two strands: social inclusion - to acknowledge that not all CE places were the same and to provide an opportunity to those who are very distant from the labour market to work and deliver services to local communities - and job activation, which is more directly related to employment opportunities for long-term unemployed. My concern is that since coming into government almost eight years ago, Fine Gael has concentrated more on the job activation element of the CE schemes and has not valued or appreciated the important social inclusion element and the vital role it plays. That is the strand many stakeholders are interested in retaining and expanding.

It is heartening that the Minister intends to engage in a special examination of the social inclusion element and all the benefits it brings. It is time that this was done. Does the Minister intend to meet the stakeholders as part of the examination in order to ensure that any reorganisation of CE can be holistic and sensitive to the needs of all the participants? There are over 20,000 participants in CE schemes but only 30% to 40% of the placements are categorised as social inclusion. We are returning to having lower numbers on the live register and I am concerned that because the number of CE places is linked to those numbers, an unintended consequence could be a reduction in the number of schemes available to people who need them and to communities that need the help. I am aware that the Minister supports this valuable service and the much-needed opportunities provided to allow all individuals who might not work otherwise to contribute to their local towns and villages, especially in rural communities.

Graiguecullen Parish CLG has been in existence since the early 1990s. Fr. Sean Kelly, the parish priest in Graiguecullen, came up with the idea of people working in their community while claiming support from social welfare. A small group of parishioners got together to seek opportunities within the community to create employment by developing local resources such as sporting activities, providing support to the elderly and maintaining schools in the community, thereby giving people a sense of identity and belonging. Following many meetings with the Minister of the day, Graiguecullen had the first pilot programme in Ireland for what was then a FÁS scheme. It continued to grow and there were many benefits from the years of this important scheme being available. In recent years, the age profile of people applying for CE there has increased. Currently, 12 participants are over the age of 55 years and five are over the age of 60. After a year in receipt of qualifying social welfare payments, people aged 55 years and over can remain on CE for a maximum of three consecutive years. After this period, it may be possible to requalify for a CE scheme following a further year in receipt of a qualifying social welfare payment.

According to the CE procedure manual, a person aged 55 years and over should be given access to training and development and supported in addressing any barriers to employment. Graiguecullen has identified issues with the system in that, while it offers access to training and development, many participants over 55 years of age do not wish to take up a course or feel that they do not have the capability to return to education. Graiguecullen interprets this as allowing participants over 55 years of age to remain on CE for three years and that while they are given access to training and development, they do not have to participate in it. The Department's interpretation only allows participants one year on the scheme unless they are undertaking the Further Education and Training Awards Council, FETAC, accredited training leading to a major award.

Graiguecullen Parish CLG has asked me to appeal to the Minister to ensure that in her review, participants over the age of 55 will be allowed a maximum of three years without any training and development requirements. We all know that those who re over 55 do not find work easily. They are often early school leavers. According to the CE procedure manual those aged 62 years and over and who are recruited under the service support scheme pilot initiative may remain on CE continuously up to State pension age and be given access to training and development and supported with addressing any barriers to employment. The Graiguecullen scheme is allowed to have three participants aged 62 years and over. It advises me that it believes that any participant aged 60 years and over, not 62 years, should be able to remain on the CE scheme continuously up to the State pension age, with an increase in the number allowed on each scheme. Recently, it had two participants who were over 60 years of age who had to go back into the jobseeker system even though they wanted to continue to work on the scheme. It is hard to find a job at that age.

I could say a great deal more. I realise how important this scheme is to the Minister and I appreciate the work she is doing. Can she examine these cases? In addition to Graiguecullen, I have met many people in Carlow who are on these schemes and who have asked me if they could be left on them. It gives them a sense of community and of pride.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I thank Senator Murnane O'Connor for giving me the opportunity to respond. If thee Cathaoirleach will indulge me, I wish to welcome the pupils from St. Paul's national school in my home village of Ratoath who are in the Visitors Gallery. I welcome them to democracy in action.

The Senator will be aware that the Department operates a number of employment support programmes which have a significant social inclusion focus across our communities, including CE, job initiative and rural social schemes. These schemes are delivered by local sponsoring groups, development companies and, in Gaeltacht areas, Údarás na Gaeltachta. The CE programme has been running since 1994, the jobs initiative scheme since 1996 and the rural social scheme since 2004. All these schemes are well embedded in community areas nationally and they are engaged in significant levels of service support and delivery. It is my strong view that the local services which are supported by these placements should be safeguarded into the future. Currently, they are not. That is why I sought the agreement of the Government to establish an interdepartmental group to explore the most appropriate organisational arrangements, including which Department should host the CE social inclusion placements, which include drug rehabilitation and childcare CE schemes, as well as the rural social and job initiative schemes.

It is important to emphasise that when CE was established, it was, first and foremost, an active labour market programme. It was designed to assist targeted unemployed individuals to return to employment. Its aim was to provide excellent work experience as well as training and development that would assist a person participating on the scheme to achieve sustainable employment. It does that, but it also does much more. Since its establishment, CE has since been categorised into two strands, namely, social inclusion and activation. The social inclusion placements are more suited to adults who need extra support to be able to work in their communities. They can be older workers, persons with disabilities, Travellers, homeless people, refugees, those requiring drug rehabilitation and ex-offenders leaving prison who need to be supported. The expected pace of progression from a social inclusion placement is much slower than the pace we would expect from an activation or an employment and training perspective.

Since being appointed as Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, one of the more enjoyable parts of my job has been travelling throughout the country and meeting the people who are running CE schemes and, more importantly, the people who are participating in them. For me, CE is as much about supporting progress into gainful employment in the community as it is about providing self-esteem, value in the local and social economy and inclusivity. It is about the people who are on the margins of either an age profile or a stage in their life because of some difficulties they have had. It is about supporting and including those people in a productive way in enjoying their social community.It is about recognising the value of the services they give in their local communities, acknowledging, rewarding and empowering them, but most of all acknowledging their input and recognising that without these people providing these services, the communities would not have those services. I know that is a failure of the State in some ways in that other Departments do not provide them, but we need to recognise and genuinely value them. This is the primary reason behind the establishment of the interdepartmental group. It did not seem right to have these two distinctive sides of the same coin being governed and ruled by a criterion set up specifically for activation, employment and training. It is not possible to have the same set of rules to govern what we call the socially inclusive places and the employment training. I have not managed to be able to relax these rules across the board. If the Senator has any specific cases, I ask her to bring them to my attention. We are trying to look at individuals on an individual basis. However, no one can micromanage this to any great extent for the 21,000 people employed and supported in community employment. This is why I want a proper conversation about the differences between people on the same scheme and the different paces at which people need to be supported in the same scheme. This is why the interdepartmental group will assess the best course of action required so as to protect the governance and the successes we have in CE activation, but also to establish the appropriate home and structure it for what is sheltered employment in our communities. We need to build custom-built services that will ensure they are wholly inclusive for everyone who requires our assistance. For those who want a fulfilling future through the vehicle of CE, that is great, and they should continue to be supported through employment, activation and training both financially and socially in equal measure.

The social inclusion placements, though, require a separate focus to ensure those who are at the furthest distance from the labour market but who are genuinely interested in working and delivering services in their local community have the opportunity to do so, and not on a short-term, one-year or two-year basis. If they want to do it, if it is fulfilling and gives them value and self-esteem in their daily activities, that fundamentally should be supported in the long term. I know some people do not agree with me on this. This is the reason for the approach of having the interdepartmental group, having us all sitting around the table, recognising as we do as politicians the real, inherent value in community employment not only from a socially inclusive perspective, but also from an activation and training perspective. We can sit around and have a real, honest conversation about how these should be split, who has which responsibilities and at what pace the rules and governance of both strands should be set. I genuinely consider the socially inclusive positions in our CE schemes as vital and as fundamental not only to the common good of the State, but more important to those people who have had the opportunity to work on them. Equally, they are detrimental to the people who have been forced out of them because of the existing rules, and I want that to stop.

I will have the first meeting of the interdepartmental group in probably the next week to ten days. It will be short and sharp. The group's work will be done by the end of March and I want to be able to go back to Cabinet with the recommendations from it. What I do not want is for us to be embroiled in months and months of long-term meetings about whether we will do this. I already know in essence what I would like to do. I need to bring everyone with me. It is not that I am discounting the valuable advice and information from all our CE host companies and participants, but I want to bring the political establishment with me first. Once the interdepartmental group has finished its work at the end of March, I will welcome any and all participants who would like to talk to me, send me written submissions or give me their experience and their value. It is because of my engagement with these people over the past 18 months and my pleasure and privilege to be able to do so that I know fundamentally that we need to change and protect, support and reward our social inclusion places and give them the pride and the self-esteem they get from fulfilling their daily duties in our communities. We need to give that as a reassurance from us.

I thank the Senator for the opportunity to say this. I genuinely welcome a wide support of information options, including any suggestions she may have from the wider political representations of both these Houses. In the next few months I will go out to our host companies and listen to them. I want this to be done quickly. Whatever budgetary measures are needed, and I know there will be some, I want to be able to start fighting for them this year in order that we can see the changes happening and those socially inclusive places supported, protected, ring-fenced and rewarded - when I am still around, I hope, and not when the Senator's party may have taken over.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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The Minister has given the Senator a very extensive-----

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail)
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I know.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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If the Senator just listens to me a second, I will explain. We usually allow eight to ten minutes for each matter. We are now almost at 15 minutes on this one. The Minister has been very frank, open and engaging. Perhaps she and the Senator should meet or communicate on the matter. I will let the Senator in for a brief supplementary question. The problem I have is that someone will say I gave Senator Murnane O'Connor 15 minutes and gave him or her only eight.

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail)
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That is fine. I have loads of names for the Minister. I thank her.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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In fairness, the Minister has been extremely open-----

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail)
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She has.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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-----and engaging and has given the Senator an avenue and an opportunity to engage with her. I wish them well with it.

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister and the Cathaoirleach.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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Not at all.