Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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408. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if her Department has engaged with community employment supervisors to allow flexibility on the advertisement of additional positions which were put in place through the July stimulus package, specifically for the provision of caretaker, cleaner positions in the childcare sector (details supplied). [59035/21]

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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The Community Employment (CE) Scheme 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 temporary, fixed term basis to improve their prospect of returning to employment.

Pathways to Work 2021-2025 is the Government’s national employment services strategy; the Government’s overall framework for activation and employment support policy. The aim of the strategy is to assist people back to work as the economy and labour market recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as supporting those who were unemployed pre-pandemic. Included in the strategy are 3,000 additional placement opportunities for the employment support schemes.

Following a call for expressions of interest from existing CE and Tús schemes earlier this year the Department received a broad range of applications from CE sponsoring authorities and Tús implementing bodies. Each application submitted was for a very specific role with related responsibilities and was evaluated and scored based on the data provided. Over 2,600 additional placements have been assigned to individual schemes to date; 1,475 additional placement opportunities have been assigned to CE schemes and 1,164 to Tús.

New places were approved and assigned based on applications by CE schemes, based on the original role applied for by schemes which were assessed against a set of common criteria. Care needs to be taken to ensure that changes, post approval, do not undermine the application and assessment process which was open to all CE and Tús schemes. CE sponsoring authorities and Tús implementing bodies have already commenced the recruitment to these new placement opportunities and a number have already been filled.

The primary focus for my Department is to continue to provide quality employment support opportunities for individuals who are long-term unemployed with the objective of bringing them closer to the labour market and employment opportunities.

The Department will continue to monitor the take up of these new places.

I trust that clarifies matters for the Deputy.