Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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Community Employment schemes across the country play a vital role in providing essential services to local communities.

A number of reforms and enhancements have been introduced to the scheme over the past 18 months , including most recently the extension of the criteria of those who can participate on CE to the adult dependents of those in receipt of Jobseeker’s Allowance and in support of Ukrainian nationals living here, a reduction in the live register qualifying period from 12 to 9 months.

This reduction is designed to take into account the fact that many Ukrainian refugees spent a number of months on supplementary welfare allowance prior to transferring to their jobseeker payments. As a consequence, if the Department had not reduced the qualifying period many people who arrived last March would not be eligible of a CE placement until June 2023.

This change enables the Department and CE sponsor organisations to work with and provide further support and assistance to Ukrainians to improve their language skills, integrate within their communities while also supporting those schemes in continuing to deliver vital local services.

Community Employment is an active labour market programme designed to provide long term unemployed people and other disadvantaged people with an opportunity to engage in useful work within their communities. It is important that the scheme continues to be available for those who would benefit most from their participation, and this continues to be those who have been out of work for a year.

There are no plans to change the 12-month eligibility rule at present. The eligibility criteria for CE, continues to be kept under active review to ensure the best outcomes for individual participants, to support the vital community services and to take account of changes to the labour market.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.