Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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88. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will outline measures taken to prevent abuse of the Work Placement Experience Programme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24515/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Work Placement Experience Programme (WPEP) is a key policy initiative under the Government's national employment services strategy, Pathways to Work 2021-2025. It is a funded work placement scheme to provide quality work experience to unemployed jobseekers to build their skills and experience.

The placements run for 6 months at 30 hours per week to include time spent on training. All participants are paid a minimum of €311 per week, plus any social welfare increases for qualified adults and children.

Participation on WPEP by jobseekers is entirely voluntary.

There are a range of checks in place prior to and during placements to make sure both participants and host organisations comply with the conditions of WPEP. My officials inform me these are working well.

All organisations who offer a WPEP placement are checked before the placement is placed on the Department’s recruitment website; jobsIreland.ie. The compliance process entails checks to ensure the host is fully compliant with all tax, health and safety and insurance obligations. In addition, there are checks to ensure that an organisation does not exceed the limit on the number of placements a host can offer based on their number of employees and has not made employees redundant from similar roles in the previous 6 months.

The individual placements on offer are checked to ensure the description reflect that these are work experience and training roles and do not require prior knowledge or experience by participants.

Once a placement has been agreed and in place, a number of checks are in place to ensure participants receive a quality work experience. Hosts are required to agree a training plan to ensure that 60 hours of training are in place including 20 hours that are accredited or sector recognised in addition to a monthly compliance checklist over the duration of the programme. There are monthly compliance notifications and checks to make sure all is in order.

In addition, an assigned Case Officer from Intreo liaises with the host and participant during the placement and undertakes two monitoring meetings, either in person or virtually, to ensure the terms and conditions of the programme are being fulfilled.

Since the programme was launched in July 2021 these arrangements have been working very well. I am not aware of any instances of non-compliance reported to date.

I trust this clarifies matters for the Deputy.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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89. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will provide an update on the community employment scheme; and the number of persons currently availing of the scheme. [24226/22]

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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The aim of the Community Employment (CE) programme is to enhance the employability of disadvantaged and long-term unemployed people by providing work experience and training opportunities for them within their local communities. The programme aims to improve a person’s opportunities to return to the labour market.

There are currently 848 CE schemes nationwide. At the end of April 2022 there were 19,037 participants and 1,243 supervisors on CE. Generally participants under 60 years of age can stay on CE for one to three years consecutively, with a maximum 6 years participation.

The budget for the CE programme in 2022 is €375.3 million. A total of €326.7million was spent on CE in 2021.

During the COVID pandemic the Minister for Social Protection and I extended CE participants contracts on a number of occasions. These contract extensions, which were in place from October 2020, supported CE schemes at various stages of the pandemic so that they could maintain important community services while also ensuring that participants had sufficient time to fully avail of the work experience and training opportunities affected by public health restrictions.

Existing CE participants have begun exiting their schemes on a coordinated and phased basis from 8 April 2022 and this will run up until January 2023. This will ensure continuity of service delivery and also support recruitment of new participants to fill consequential and existing vacancies.

In light of the COVID related challenges faced by CE schemes, Minister Humphreys and I announced a number of changes to CE in December 2021.

The CE baseline year was increased from 2007 to 2014 with immediate effect. The baseline year will be maintained at 7 years behind the current year going forward i.e. on 1 January 2022, the baseline year moved to 2015. This will benefit some persons who remain unemployed or once again become unemployed a while after completing a CE scheme, as time spent on schemes prior to the baseline year do not count towards participation limits on CE.

Persons over 60 years of age can now remain on CE until they reach the state pension age regardless of the time limits. Previously this only applied to persons over 62.

In addition, in order to assist with the transition from COVID emergency supports over the next period, participants, including those with extended contracts, may not be required to leave CE, until a suitable replacement has been referred to the scheme.

I will continue to support and improve the programme for the benefit of the CE participants and the valuable contribution being made to local communities through the provision of services while ensuring that places continue to be made available to those who are long term unemployed.

I trust this clarifies the position for the Deputy.