Peter Cleere (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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115. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection his plans to provide increased flexibility to local community employment schemes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21380/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The objective of Community Employment (CE) is to enhance the employability of disadvantaged and long-term unemployed persons by providing work experience and training opportunities for them within their local communities on a temporary fixed term basis.

In addition to providing eligible people with valuable occupational experience and training as a stepping-stone to employment in the open-labour market, schemes such as CE also support important and, in many cases essential, local community services.

The OECD in a recently published review of the CE and Tús schemes found a positive impact on the employment and earnings of participants, especially for older participants on CE and younger participants on Tús. The review also found that participants are less likely to rely on disability payments and are more likely to find employment after their participation.

CE projects are in diverse areas and include the development, regeneration and enhancement of community spaces, environmental maintenance, early years, and after-school supports, heritage, arts, culture, tourism, sport, recycling and repair of equipment, visitation, friendly call, and befriending programmes for older people.

Given the strong labour market performance, the reduction in the number of unemployed people on the Live Register has impacted on the availability of potential candidates to participate on these schemes.

My Department, working together with CE sponsors have made a number of changes in recent times to support CE sponsors in their recruitment and retention of participants. These changes include:

• A provision to allow CE participants who reach 60 years of age to remain in CE until they reach state pension age.
• Some flexibility granted to CE sponsors to retain existing participants for extended periods in cases where a replacement can’t be recruited immediately.
• Changes to eligibility criteria extending CE eligibility to the adult dependents of those in receipt of Jobseeker’s Allowance.
• A new pilot scheme to extend CE eligibility to those over 50 years of age in receipt of credits or a combination of credits & Jobseekers Benefit.