Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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117. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will enhance the community employment scheme in order to increase opportunities to carers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25130/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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To qualify for the carer’s allowance payment, a person must meet certain conditions. For example, they cannot be engaged in employment, self-employment, training or education courses outside the home for more than 15 hours a week as this would impact on their caring responsibilities. Community Employment (CE) involves working a 19.5 hour week, so by taking up a CE position a person would be in breach of this rule, which would cause the payment to cease.

However, when a person’s caring responsibilities cease, they can transfer to a CE-qualifying social welfare payment (e.g. jobseeker’s allowance) for at least 1 week and have their cumulative time spent in receipt of carer’s allowance and their current payment counted towards the 12 month CE-qualifying period (e.g. 51 weeks on carer’s allowance plus 1 week on jobseekers allowance will qualify the person for one year on CE).

There are no plans currently to introduce further measures in this regard in relation to participation on CE.