Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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284. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if there are any plans to increase payments to community employment scheme participants to take up work on a scheme and combat recruitment shortages, further to the Budget 2023 increase of €5; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49348/22]

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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Community Employment (CE) 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. Participation on the scheme is part time - 19.5 hours per week.

Currently payment rates on CE are related to the underlying value of certain social protection payments plus €22.50 per week. In addition, a participant may be eligible for payments in respect of any qualified dependent adult and children.

If a CE participant's underlying payment (including dependents) is €208 a week or less, they receive the minimum CE weekly rate of €230.50, that is €208 plus the top up of €22.50. If a participant's underlying payment (including dependents) is €208 or more,then they receive the same rate as their social welfare payment plus €22.50.

CE participants can retain their medical card and can also retain any additional benefits they were entitled to on their underlying scheme prior to joining CE, for example Fuel Allowance, provided they continue to satisfy the qualifying conditions for those benefits.

CE participants can also work outside of the 19.5 hours that they participant on CE. The income from this employment does not affect their CE payment rate.

Under Budget 2023, CE participants will receive an increase in weekly payments arising from the increase in core social welfare payments of €12 per week, in addition to the increase in the weekly CE allowance of €5. Additionally, there will be proportional increases for qualified adults and people on reduced rates of payment. The weekly payments for qualified child dependents will increased by €2 to €50 for children aged 12 or over and €40 for children aged up to 12. These increases, will also benefit eligible CE participants.

In order to combat issues with recruitment and scheme vacancies, along with assisting schemes to maintain services in the current tight labour market, Minister Humphreys and I introduced a number of reforms to CE in January of this year and again in June. These reforms include allowing those over 60 years to remain on CE until pension age, applying a consistent 7-year gap between the current year and the baseline year, increased referral activity to CE, new flexibility afforded to CE schemes in respect of recruitment and allowing schemes to extend individual placements and retain existing participants in cases where no replacement is available.

I am fully committed to the future of this programme and 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.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.