John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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268. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of vacancies throughout the State on community employment, Tús and rural social schemes. [14304/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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My Department operates a range of employment support measures which are designed to encourage the unemployed to re-enter the labour market by participating in schemes such as Community Employment (CE), Tús and the Rural Social Scheme (RSS).

The Deputy will appreciate that given the welcome improvements in the labour market in recent years with reducing numbers of long term unemployed on the Live Register, which is the target cohort for CE and Tús, it is proving difficult to fill the number of places available nationwide. Long-term unemployment is expected to fall further this year in line with the continuing forecasted fall in overall unemployment. There has been a 48% fall in the numbers on the Live Register who are more than 1 year unemployed in the five years since the end December 2012.

According to the JobsIreland website, where all CE vacancies are advertised, there were approximately 1,500 CE posts vacant on Monday 26^thMarch 2018.

There are 47 Local Development Companies (LDCs) as well as Údarás na Gaeltachta known as Implementing Bodies (IBs) involved in the delivery of the Tús programme. Those engaged on both Tús and RSS are generally referred to as participants and are the employees of the designated IBs.Nationally, the current Tús quota is for 8,260 participant placements across the 48 IB’s. As on 23th March 2018, there were approximately 1,950 participant vacancies nationwide.

As on 16th March 2018, there were 153 participant vacancies on the rural social scheme (RSS).As part of Budget 2018, I announced an additional 250 places on the RSS. These places were allocated to the RSS Implementing bodies with effect from 23^rdMarch 2018 and will be rolled out shortly. This will increase the overall number of places to 3,350.

It should be noted that this data is quite dynamic given the throughput on a number of these schemes. Therefore, the data will change almost weekly for both CE and Tús as participants commence and exit the programmes.