Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)
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Question 262: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the guidelines governing applications by people aged 55 and over for community employment schemes. [27266/07]

Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)
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Question 263: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the overall guidelines for a person applying for a place on a community employment scheme. [27267/07]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 262 and 263 together.

Community Employment (CE) is an active labour market programme designed to provide eligible long term unemployed people and other disadvantaged persons with an opportunity to engage in useful work within their communities on a fixed term basis. CE helps unemployed people to re-enter the open labour market by breaking their experience of unemployment through a return to a work routine and to assist them to enhance/develop both their technical and personal skills.

The criteria for participating on the Community Employment programme are based on age and length of time in receipt of various social welfare payments. In general, the Part-time Integration Option is for people of 25 or over who are receiving social welfare payments for 1 year or more, and people of 18 years or over in receipt of disability-related payments. The Part-time Job Option is for people who are 35 or over and in receipt of social welfare payments for 3 years or longer.

Certain groups such as travellers and refugees aged 18 or over are eligible for both options. If you qualify under the criteria but do not wish to take up the option yourself, there are certain conditions under which you can do a spousal swap.

To cater for older workers in particular, in November 2004 I revised the 3 year CE cap to allow those of 55 years of age and over to avail of a 6-year period on CE (based on participation since 3rd April 2000). Subsequently, the participation limit for persons eligible for CE based on a Social Welfare disability linked payment was increased by one year. These measures were introduced in recognition of the fact that older participants and participants with a disability may find it more difficult to progress into the open labour market.