Frank O'Rourke (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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324. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the cost of extending community employment schemes to 18 months and two years in duration respectively; his views on providing greater flexibility to schemes to extend the current duration of schemes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14736/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Community Employment (CE) is an active labour market programme designed to provide eligible long-term unemployed people and other disadvantaged with an opportunity to engage in part-time work and training within their communities on a temporary, fixed-term basis.

The pattern of participation on the Community Employment (CE) programme is dependent on the individual circumstance of each person and the length of time she has been in receipt of a CE-qualifying social welfare payment. The current participation patterns have been in place since CE commenced in 1994. In general a person must be12 months or more in receipt of a qualifying social welfare payment to be eligible for 1 year on CE. If a person is 3 years or more in receipt of a qualifying payment social welfare payment, and over 35 years, they are eligible for 3 consecutive year’s participation on CE.

The CE budget allocation for 2016 is €376.5m and it allows for 23,752 participants and 1,375 supervisory staff. The effect of extending participation time limits on CE would be to decrease the number of places available rather than increase the cost. The current eligibility rules and maximum durations allowed for participants are strictly enforced to allow the maximum number of people to benefit from the opportunity of a CE placement.

The Department keeps the eligibility criteria for Community Employment (CE) places under on-going review to ensure that they are effective in targeting long-term unemployed jobseekers and other specific disadvantaged groups.