Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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136. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she has further plans to change the way community employment schemes operate; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43901/14]

Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The Department keeps the operations of the Community Employment (CE) scheme under review and, where necessary, it updates the programme to comply with legislation changes, Government policy decisions, (e.g. Pathways to Work) and Departmental policy decisions (e.g. the CE Childcare programme).

CE is subject to continuous improvement and the Department seeks to maximise the utilisation of resources to achieve the best outcomes for the CE participants in terms of awards achieved and progression to employment and, at the same time, to underpin and support the provision of local community services.

One such development is the provision of child care support to CE participants to enable parents to participate on the scheme. Childcare places will be allocated to children up to 13 years of age (part-time places for those children up to 5 years of age and after-school places for those of school-going age). There is a nominal cost of €15 per child per week.

Other recent improvements to the CE programme include the new 3-year application for approval for each individual scheme (instead of annual applications) which reduces the administrative burden on both CE sponsoring organisations and the Department’s staff.

New Programme and Training Monitoring Guidelines were also implemented in 2014. The monitoring is completed by Departmental staff on-site and aims to ensure compliance with Departmental CE Procedures and to raise the quality of schemes.

The new Sponsor Engagement Pack is being rolled out by the Department over the coming months. This will provide an opportunity for sponsors to meet with DSP staff to get an update on developments on CE and to engage with and to provide feedback to the Department.