Michael Lowry (Tipperary North, Independent)
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Question 369: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will confirm the restrictions currently in operation for participants on the FÁS community employment scheme. [36170/06]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The primary purpose of CE is to provide short-term work experience and training opportunities for long-term unemployed persons and other disadvantaged groups with a view to facilitating their progression to work in the open labour market.

Community Employment has two categories of participants, Part-time Integration Option and Part-time Job Option, each option having its own set of qualifying conditions and the main conditions are set out below.

The main qualifying condition for the Part-time Integration option is for a person to be 25 years or over and in receipt of specified payments from Department of Social and Family Affairs including Unemployment Benefit (UB) or Unemployment Assistance (UA) for 12 months or more.

In regard to the Part-time Job Option the main qualifying condition is for a person to be between 35 years of age and 65 years of age and in receipt of specified payments from Department of Social and Family Affairs including Unemployment Benefit (UB) or Unemployment Assistance (UA) for 3 years or more.

In certain circumstances, persons aged 18 years or over may also participate on CE if they meet the relevant eligibility criteria such as being in receipt of Disability Allowance or Blind Pension.

Having completed 12 months participation on CE a person must normally be on the Live Register for a further 12 months before recommencing CE participation.

As part of the restructuring of CE approved in 1999, future participation in CE by an individual was capped at 3 years, effective from April, 2000. This measure was introduced to facilitate the movement of participants through CE, allowing new participants who may not otherwise have such an opportunity to avail of the programme. However, depending on the circumstances, FÁS may approve additional time on a scheme in order to address the needs of individual participants or to maintain service provision.

Following a review of policy on the operation of Employment Programmes, from 10 November 2004 those aged 55 years of age and over are eligible to participate on CE for a maximum period of 6 years, based on participation since 3rd April 2000.

More recently, in July of this year my Department published its Sectoral Plan under the Disability Act, 2005. One of the key initiatives of this Plan is to increase participation rates of people with disabilities on CE over the period of the Plan and to raise the CE participation limits for people with disabilities, in order to provide additional training to assist progression to employment:

For people with disabilities under 55 years of age, the participation limit has been raised by one year from 3 to 4 years

For people with disabilities over 55 years of age, the participation limit has also been raised by one year from 6 to 7 years.