I propose to share time with Deputies Gerry Adams, Michael Colreavy, Seán Crowe, Martin Ferris and Dessie Ellis.
Gateway Scheme: Motion [Private Members]
Is that agreed? Agreed.
I move:
That Dáil Éireann:
noting that:
— when the Government came to power, 55.1% of those unemployed were long-term unemployed, after three years of this Government 61.4% of those unemployed are now long-term unemployed; and
— there has been a 25% reduction in local authority staffing levels since 2011 and local authority services are therefore unable to provide adequate services across a range of areas, as evidenced by the recent delays in addressing damage caused by severe weather;
considers that the new Gateway scheme:
— is a work-for-benefits scheme, also known as workfare or forced labour, on which participation is not voluntary;
— entails 22 months of hard labour for a very small social welfare top-up of €20 that can be all but eroded by tax;
— will not enhance the employability of participants, as there is no quality training involved and there is a recruitment embargo in place on local authorities;
— punishes the unemployed for being unemployed;
— copperfastens the under-staffing of essential local services; and
— undermines existing pay, terms and conditions for staff across the local authority sector; and
calls on the Government to abandon the Gateway scheme and instead explore the introduction of an alternative activation programme based on a training-intensive community employment scheme-type model for a local authority context or temporary work experience opportunities on the basis of equal pay for equal work done.
Since this Government took office there has been a staff reduction of up to 25% across the local authorities in this State. This means there are 9,000 fewer staff in our local authorities. However, the demand for local authority services has not decreased. Demand for essential local services is probably greater now than ever before. This Government's response to the lack of council staff to deliver those services as a result of the public service recruitment embargo is to encourage local authorities to engage in exploitative social welfare schemes such as JobBridge to replace almost 1,000 properly paid employees. They are now being further encouraged to replace an additional 3,000 staff with participants of the Gateway scheme. Rather than admit that its approach to public sector reform and management of it was ill-advised, or rethinking the public sector recruitment embargo, as it should do, this Government has invented a new and nasty scheme, using victims of the economic crash to, as set out in the Department's documentation "Do the work that the local authority used to undertake but no longer has the resources to carry out." That is the intended purpose of the Gateway scheme.
The Gateway scheme is not designed with the needs of the long-term unemployed in mind, or to enhance the future employment prospects of the unemployed. The raison d'être of this scheme is to provide chronically under-funded local authorities with cheap general dogsbodies. During the 22 months that a jobseeker participates in the Gateway scheme he or she is at the disposal of the local council. What must be done and when, including working on Sundays, is left to the whim of the local council manager. Local authorities can vary the work of the jobseeker as the authorities' needs rather than the jobseeker's learning or work experience needs dictate. All of this work, which will be physically demanding hard labour, will be mainly outdoor work such as litter collection, landscaping, animal control and clearing brown field sites and is to be done for an additional €20 per week, which is equal to €1 per hour worked. That is a disgrace. Even this top-up can be eroded by tax. I sought confirmation of this from the Department and was provided with a table demonstrating that after PRSI, some people will be negatively affected. They will not get the €20 per week being held out as a carrot to those who are in receipt of long-term unemployment payments.
The Minister, Deputy Bruton, and Minister of State, Deputy Costello, will be aware that people who participated in community employment schemes benefited in terms of training and experience. Gateway compares poorly with the community employment scheme, in respect of which the Minister, Deputy Burton, slashed the training and materials grant, which decision she subsequently had to row back on. CE involves accredited training, leading to recognised awards under the National Framework of Qualifications. It now has a budget of €1,000 per annum per participant. Gateway involves no structured training and no formal training beyond the minimal health and safety course which is required by the host council's insurance policy. Gateway's only budget is for helmets and wellington boots. The employability of those who participate in Gateway will not be enhanced. There is no money for training.
I want to address the issue of compulsion. This is a compulsory scheme. A jobseeker whose name is selected by an official in the Department of Social Protection for participation in this scheme must participate in the scheme for 22 months. The Gateway scheme is in many ways a carbon copy of the Tús scheme, which was roundly condemned by the Labour Party when it was first proposed by former Fianna Fáil Minister, Deputy Eamon Ó Cuív. Once in government the Labour Party did a U-turn - one of the many it has done since taking office - and introduced Tús. The main criticism of Tús is that it has no training budget and does not guarantee a jobseeker any recognised qualification which would assist his or her employment prospects. Jobseekers do not freely participate in Gateway. Instead, they are selected by the Department. Those selected have no choice but to participate under threat of loss of their social welfare payment, on which income support they and their families rely. Therein lies the punitive truth of this scheme. It is a scheme of forced labour.
During its century in existence, the Labour Party has prided itself on its links with the trade union movement and the trade unions' promotion of better pay and conditions. The Gateway scheme breaches the C29 Forced Labour Convention which this State ratified in 1931. That is a fact. Article 1.1 of that convention states:
Each Member of the International Labour Organisation which ratifies this convention undertakes to suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the shortest possible period.
Article 2.1 states:
For the purpose of this convention the term forced or compulsory labour shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.
I urge the Minister, Deputy Bruton, and his colleagues, not alone in Fine Gael but in the Labour Party, to read that convention. The Gateway and Tús schemes contravene that convention in the context of the menace of penalty involved. It is forced labour. The Gateway scheme also falls foul of that convention in all its manifestations and will do so unless withdrawn. This case is persuasively made by an insightful report on Gateway that has been put together and submitted as a complaint to the International Labour Organisation by Adam Ó Braonáin, a community development activist involved in the establishment of a jobseekers' forum in Monaghan. I will forward a copy of it to the Minister for Social Protection, who would do well to read it. It is a pity she did not review the law before setting about introducing this scheme.
While participating in Gateway, a jobseeker's allowance from the Department of Social Protection will be replaced by a payment from the employing council.
That will be administered by Pobal, which will basically give the council the money to pass on. A problem arises in this regard because local authorities will be able to use their own disciplinary procedures to suspend the payment of a family's entire income support in the case of a dispute with the Gateway participant. This falls outside the normal procedures that are applied by the Department of Social Protection. Again, that is a scandal and, as a result of the fact that compulsion is involved, it represents a breach of contract with the Department. Is it really fair to subject Gateway participants to the same disciplinary procedures as council employees without affording them the same terms and conditions, rates of pay, working hours and trade union representation? I am of the view that it is not fair and it is a shame that the Labour Party is behind this.
The whole point of any activation scheme should ultimately be to promote entry to the labour force, that is, for the participant to proceed to secure full-time paid work. However, Gateway participants are required to give a minimum of one week's notice if they are fortunate to be offered full-time work. Failure to comply with this stipulation could have negative repercussions should the individual involved be unlucky to return to the live register in the future. In today's labour market people need to be able to jump at opportunities when they are offered. If there is an offer of immediate full-time paid employment, then the Gateway participant involved should be allowed to avail of it. Let it not be forgotten that they are not employees but they will be treated as such by the Department and local authorities. They certainly will not be treated as employees when their wages are set. The notice requirement will place Gateway participants at a significant disadvantage in comparison to other jobseekers who will still have the potential to take up job offers at a day's notice. People who are unlucky enough to be placed on the compulsory Gateway scheme will not be able to so from now on.
As always, the Government had options. It did not need to introduce this punitive scheme of forced labour. Instead, it could have considered the alternatives. In that context, a good activation scheme is one that does not exploit or displace work - I have not mentioned displacement too much but my party colleagues will do so during their contributions; that first and foremost offers meaningful training and experience to the participant - from what is stated in the Department's documentation on the matter, Gateway falls well short in this regard; that enhances the future employment prospects of the participant - Gateway again falls short in that regard and may even hinder people's future prospects; and that allows jobseekers to apply to participate. Of course, the latter will not be allowed to apply to participate on Gateway.
I have called on the Minister and the Government to withdraw the Gateway scheme, return to the drawing board and redevelop the community employment model, which is obviously not the bee's knees of employment schemes, in order that we might provide more meaningful opportunities for jobseekers. To date, the opportunity which exists in this regard has not been grasped. The Government could extend existing community employment schemes to involve appropriate structured training opportunities in a local authority context. Some such schemes throughout the country already work well with local authorities, which have an understanding of how they work. In addition, the Government could make short-term work experience opportunities available to the long-term unemployed on the basis of equal pay for equal work done. There is none of this in the Gateway scheme. For many years women in particular were obliged to fight for equality and for equal pay for equal work. In government, the Labour Party is now seeking to erode what has been achieved for those who are unlucky enough to be unemployed long term. I refer here to those who have been on the live register for two years or more.
The Government's amendment to the motion is absolutely pathetic. The Government could not even argue against the points we made in our motion. Rather than do so, it decided to delete our entire motion and draft an amendment that is basically an exercise in self-congratulation. The amendment concludes with the Minister for Social Protection commending herself, which is bizarre. It is an absolute shame that a Labour Minister is introducing this scheme, which does not involve the provision of training, will lead to the displacement of local authority workers and in respect of which a measly and meagre rate of pay will apply, at this point. The Government should hang its head in shame on this issue.
I mbuiséad 2013, chuir an Rialtas tús leis an scéim Gateway, a chuireann daoine dífhostaithe faoi bhrú dul ag obair ar feadh 19 uair go leith i gcomhair €20 sa bhreis ar an jobseeker's allowance. As my friend, Deputy Ó Snodaigh pointed out, the Gateway scheme compels unemployed people to carry out work for local authorities, with threats of cuts to or suspension of welfare payments if they do not comply. This is despite the fact that only a fraction of the minimum wage will be paid in return for such work. Where does Labour stand in the context of this particular transaction? No training will be provided, nor will there be any prospect of long-term employment for those being forced to accept places on Gateway. Where stands Labour in respect of that matter?
Gateway punishes the unemployed for being unemployed and copperfastens the understaffing of essential local services. Even if an unemployed person is motivated to do so, he or she cannot apply to participate on Gateway. Instead, the victim is selected by the Department of Social Protection. If, for whatever reason, he or she declines to participate, he or she will risk a reduction in or total loss of his or her social welfare income support. That is what makes Gateway similar to the Tús initiative originally conceived by Fianna Fáil. We did not have time to research what the Labour Party had to say about that initiative when it was introduced. However, it is clear that it was an anti-class and anti-fraud - so-called - measure rather than an activation measure.
The €20 top-up to be paid to Gateway participants will be subject to PRSI and in some cases it will be almost completely eroded. For example, a parent with four children could be obliged to pay €18 or €20 in PRSI. Local authorities have been given 3,000 places to fill but surely - again we must ask what is Labour's position on this matter - the citizens who take them up deserve proper terms and conditions and to have their rights, as workers, respected. The Gateway scheme expressly intends that participants will do work which local authorities no longer carry out as a result of the recruitment embargo. I presume the demand for such work remains but it cannot be done as a result of Government policy. The upshot is that this yellow-pack version of a community employment scheme is being introduced to fill the void. The Gateway scheme is also being introduced in the aftermath of local authority funding being drastically slashed and in an environment where the public service embargo continues to hold sway. In the past year alone, 3,000 jobs have been axed from local authorities. The notion of using cheap - almost free - labour should be repugnant to anyone who is a member of the labour movement. It is nothing but exploitation of unemployed citizens.
People become annoyed when they contrast that with the deference paid to others in society. For example, €500 million has been taken out of the local authority budget and given to Irish Water. Some €75 million or €85 million of this was paid to consultants and the remainder will be spent on installing water meters. None of this expenditure will lead to the creation of sustainable jobs.
The Government is not serious about this being an employment scheme. In my constituency of Louth the target figure for inclusion in the Gateway scheme is 80. The unemployment figure for Louth is 16,000. A total of 80 places out of 16,000 is not exactly a jobs initiative even if these were by any measure real jobs. The scheme follows on the heels of JobBridge, which also exploits welfare recipients with little hope of gaining long-term employment or skills training.
If there was real investment in indigenous Irish business, for example, the building of primary health services or health centres throughout the State - not only where the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly wants them - or real investment to provide real jobs by developing services, for example, to fix the leaking water system rather than install meters outside people's homes in order that people can be charged for water, then we would be making some fist of it. The Government should withdraw the scheme - a first step would be to withdraw the shameful Government amendment - and support the Sinn Féin motion.
The Gateway scheme as proposed by the Government is an exploitative measure. It takes advantage of a sector of Irish society made up of those who have found themselves in a vulnerable position, that is, being unemployed. The Government has decided to punish unemployed people for being unemployed. Thomas Davis, the famous Irish patriot, said "Educate that you may be Free". This is the key to fighting against unemployment and to the creation of a diverse and dynamic economy. Gateway does not provide for brighter futures or include training or education mechanisms and, as such, it does not enhance the employability of participants. Fully 61.4% of those now unemployed are in long-term unemployment. The Government must realise that to change the trend of unemployment in the country it must change the way it deals with unemployment. Opportunities to return to education, upskill and diversify must be made available to those who are unlucky enough to find themselves unemployed. Any policy should also include a review of the higher education grant scheme, which puts the most extraordinary obstacles in front of people, particularly younger people who were working and then laid off or who were self-employed and then forced out of business, to qualify for higher education grants.
Is forced emigration still a budgetary strategy of the Government? The question of what work is worth must also be asked. Under the Gateway scheme unemployed people are forced to carry out work for local authorities through the threat of cuts and suspension to welfare payments. People are forced into 22 months' hard labour and in return receive a measly top-up of €20 per week. There is a term for someone who does not have the right to withdraw his labour and that is a slave. Gateway is nothing more then state-sanctioned slave labour. This, at the same time that cuts are being made to council services. Real jobs with real wages are being taken out of the economy.
Bob Crow, former general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers passed away today, Lord rest him. I imagine the House will join me in commiserating his loss. When he was asked about the outsourcing of jobs he said: "If you have robots build cars, how are robots going to buy them?" If we take real jobs out of the economy and replace them with the likes of the Gateway scheme it will have a knock-on effect on the real economy. Replacing someone who used to earn a full wage with someone who gets €20 on top of his social welfare payment means that shops, bars, restaurants and, ultimately, other people's jobs will suffer.
This scheme is part of a litany of mistakes made by the Government in dealing with the unemployment crisis. The JobBridge scheme should be called the JobBridge scam because it is being used by many companies to avail of free labour instead of hiring people on a decent wage. Behind the Gateway scam is a right-wing belief that unemployed people are unemployed by choice and that they should be forced into work. It is this same right-wing thinking that has landed us in the economic mess we are in currently and which has resulted in thousands being forced to join the dole queues. The architects of our economic crash prosper while the victims of the crash emigrate or are forced into slave labour. Little wonder that people are angry and disillusioned with politics and politicians.
I imagine we will be told tonight by the Government side that the crisis is over, that the economy is healthy and that the live register is going down. I suppose this will be the spin from the Government side. Recent figures show that there are 61,000 more people in work than the previous corresponding 12-month period and I accept that. However, the figures quietly ignore that much of this can be attributed to emigration and a change in the Central Statistics Office measurement tools, or that the vast majority of jobs are being created in the low pay and low skills sectors. The Government has continually set out to attack those on social welfare and cut the associated payments. In 2014 the Government cut unemployment benefit for those under 25 years of age and publicly stated that this would entice more people into work. Has that happened? I do not believe it has. It did not and it has not. What it did was force more and more people on the flight path to emigration as well as pushing many more into deeper poverty.
Let us consider the sad and bleak figures and remember that there is a story behind every figure. A total of 127,000 people of working age have left the country since 2009. Recent research has shown that 60% of Irish emigrants were in employment when they left. The numbers of people emigrating in search of jobs or because the jobs here do not offer progressive career paths or opportunities as well as the numbers stuck in low pay or who lack sufficient working hours make it clear that there is a serious problem in our so-called healthy jobs sector.
The Government decided in its wisdom that all these people needed a little more experience. It set up JobBridge to make jobseekers work full-time jobs for a few bob on top of their dole. Is it not legitimate to ask that if we offer companies free labour, then why would they ever hire full-time properly paid employees? I imagine this is the question that many people listening to this debate will be asking. The scheme is a failure and akin to the exploiting of vulnerable people who cannot say "No" or question the validity of the programmes that the Government is putting them on.
A 22 month long stint with a county or city council is being offered, but this does not involve quality training or enhance employability and it is not voluntary. Basically, it is a scheme that is being foisted on the unemployed to get them to work a full-time job for €20 on top of their dole payment, as mentioned by other speakers. Is €20 going to get people back to work? It costs people money to go to work. In many cases this princely sum does not cover expenses. Those working 19 and a half hours per week on the Gateway scheme will get less than €1 per hour extra. The scheme allows local councils to circumvent the recruitment embargo and get some cheap jobs done at the same time. The scheme cannot be accused of innovation, it will not have a positive impact on long-term unemployed people and it is not in keeping with best international practice. For many, it is seen as a direct attack on workers' rights and an abuse of vulnerable jobseekers. It is time for the Government to stop its attack of people on social welfare and instead focus on creating real enduring jobs.
This is a problem throughout Europe. We have consistently called for a robustly funded youth guarantee scheme to ensure every young person in the State can avail of a real job or training place. There can be no recovery without jobs and these are among the options the Government could take instead of implementing these madcap schemes.
For example, we have called for the use of the discretionary fund of €6.4 billion in the National Pensions Reserve Fund. In addition, we have called for no more cuts in the capital expenditure budget to invest in a roll-out of essential infrastructure such as the A5 road completion, school and primary care centre build, completion of regeneration projects, the comprehensive roll-out of broadband, and an upgrading of the water system, rather than the introduction of water meters.
We have asked the Government to seek European Investment Bank-matched funding for the re-establishment of the sugar beet industry in the south east, the development of Knock Airport, the regeneration of the Cork docklands, and the deepening of the harbour berths at Rosslare. We have called for the establishment, with the pension industry, of investment in a green bank that will fund the roll-out of energy retrofitting and generate stable returns higher than Government bonds for the pension industry.
These are the options we are outlining, which the Government should consider.
This Government is very good at spin. There is spin about a recovery and job creation, in addition to spin about the likes of the Taoiseach and his friend Frank Flannery sharing the pain of working people. Not a Deputy or Senator is unaware of how empty all that old guff about recovery is, when we see people from our own areas every day who are suffering due to this Government's policies. People are frantic with worry and stress. Many have experienced tragic circumstances because of the impossibility of adequately supporting their families in this State due to the Government's continuous austerity policies.
This Gateway outrage is more of it. Gateway forces unemployed people to carry out work for local authorities through the threat of cuts and suspensions to welfare payments. It is a cheap, exploitative scheme which will then be presented to the people as a job creation exercise because it massages the live register figures. In fact, it is punitive and takes advantage of people by forcing them into slave labour for local authorities which, of course, need workers but cannot employ them due to the recruitment embargo. Surely it must breach the most basic principles of labour law and the international convention on forced labour. Has the Minister ever thought this through? What will it do to the morale of local authority workers to be working alongside people who are forced to do the job for €20 per week?
The Taoiseach and Tánaiste smiled for the cameras with Angela Merkel last week. They were like three cats that got the cream on the steps of Government Buildings. Back slapping and self-congratulation was the order of the day. The founders of the Labour Party must be somersaulting in their graves.
However, there is another aspect to the suffering being meted out by Fine Gael and Labour. They are not just visiting this burden on the working people of today, but arranging it so that future generations too will look back on this Fine Gael-Labour Government as the one which rolled back the hard-won gains of the trade union movement down through the decades.
God be with the days when the Labour Party stood up to the bosses and the Government to defend working people against this kind of exploitation. If this was not being forced upon people, what union, shop steward or shop-floor worker would accept it? How can Labour Party members tolerate support for a scheme which forces people into 22 months of hard labour for a welfare top-up of €20 that can be eroded by tax? It does not include training, does not feature education and does not make it easier for anyone to get a job afterwards. It is a product of the ideological rot that has set into the Labour Party, suggesting that the unemployed are the problem in our economy and not unemployment, which is made worse by the Government's own austerity policies. It is dehumanising people who have lost their jobs and punishing them by making them slaves. The plan is to employ up to 80 people on this scheme in Kerry. What choice will they have when the Minister is threatening to cut their social welfare if they do not enter into this work-for-benefits scheme?
There are two important facts to note in this regard. First, when this Government took office 55.1% of the unemployed were unfortunately long-term. Now, after three years of this Fine Gael-Labour coalition, 61.4% of those without work are long-term unemployed. Second, there has been a 25% reduction in local authority workers since 2011. In view of this, local authorities are struggling to provide the most basic services or even deal with the emergency situation caused by the recent savage storms.
I call on the Government not to go ahead with this scheme. It should stop it now and instead look for the alternatives in activation schemes, centred on a training-based community employment scheme. Such a scheme should, by right, be non-exploitative and based on what I believed was a rock-solid principle of the trade union movement and the Labour Party - equal pay for equal work.
I am calling on Labour Party Deputies to prove me wrong when I say that if they go along with this, they can no longer claim to be a Labour Party. They will well and truly have crossed the ideological line and joined Fine Gael as a party of the right, which has no conscience about shamelessly exploiting workers. I call on all Deputies to support this motion and protect workers' rights that have been fought for long and hard.
I wanted to get an idea of the track record of the Government in providing jobs and training for people, so I looked up the JobBridge website today. The first advertisement I found was for an Advance Pitstop position which had been filled 28 times previously by the JobBridge scheme. This was not about providing jobs, it was about exploiting people as much as possible until they were thrown back on the heap. Advance Pitstop is a disgrace and so is the Minister who allows this to carry on.
Gateway is no better. The principle of Gateway, the fact that it exists and could be proposed by a member of the Labour Party no less, is an insult to the idea that people have any rights. It says clearly that fair treatment, decency and respect are privileges that one earns with the accumulation of wealth. It says that if people are young, uneducated and out of work for any reason, they do not deserve something as basic as a decent day's pay for a decent day's work. It denies flatly that if a job is worth having done it is worth paying for.
In its implementation, the State and local authorities, like the businesses in JobBridge, exemplify the destructive, exploitative nature of capitalism that its strongest proponents so flatly deny. If a job is worth doing it is worth paying for. It is worth a decent wage for that decent day's work. That is what we are fighting to uphold when we fight against Gateway and JobBridge and other such schemes. They do not activate employment but further incentivise and legitimise the worst cases of exploitation.
In this State where the Taoiseach earns more than most EU leaders, the Labour Party now feels that the worst-off should work for free. Unemployed people in an economy which has not seen a major growth in job numbers, will now be forced to work for a €20 top-up on their dole for 22 long months. That is not even enough for a weekly bus pass, especially since this Government decided to hike up fares every six months. The Government claims this will give unemployed people experience which will help them to get a job.
Training is important but we have seen the kind of training provided by Labour-designed job activation policies. JobBridge was not a method of getting training and experience for people without jobs, and neither will Gateway. No account is taken of existing experience of the people being forced to slave for virtually nothing. Through JobBridge people with qualifications who have simply lost out to the economic collapse are being asked to take unpaid work cutting chips in the local fast-food restaurant or washing floors. How is sweeping streets or planting trees any better as a form of training? If these jobs need to be done, they should be paid for.
One cannot create jobs by forcing people to work. JobBridge only created profit for the unscrupulous who will exploit it. Gateway will actively discourage councils from creating real jobs, relying instead on the team of free workers straight out of the dole queue. Those selected randomly and forced to slave will have to do so for 19.5 hours a week. That means they are being paid less than €1 an hour, except that 20 cent will be subject to PRSI.
I do not know how the Labour Party could stomach this, much less propose and implement it. It is disgusting. The scheme includes no structured formal training. It is worthless to those who will be forced to take part but lucrative for the Government, or so it hopes, which will claim further success in reducing joblessness when it has 3,000 people working for nothing.
Real people, with families and homes need real jobs that pay real wages. They need training in some cases but training that will genuinely put them in a position to find work. If labour activation was so important to this Government, community employment schemes would have been improved, but instead they were nearly done away with altogether. If training was really important to this Government, third level education would not become more and more expensive for ordinary people. Schools would not be forced to cut the cloth closer each year. Grants supporting people returning to education would not be so difficult to access. That would be a real drive towards training and upskilling. It would not help the Government to spend a little money investing in people while also saving money by running local services on the cheap with free labour. This scheme stinks. It is a scam, just like JobBridge, and no one is fooled.
I move amendment No. 1:
To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann” and substitute the following:
"acknowledges the important role that activation and work placement initiatives have had on supporting jobseekers;
notes that:
— the number of people in employment in Ireland grew by 61,000 or 3.3% last year and stood at over 1.9 million at the end of 2013; and
— the rate of unemployment was 11.9% in February 2014, down from 15% in early 2012;
nevertheless remains concerned that:
— the level of unemployment is still far too high;
— 60,000 young people aged under 25 are without work; and
— long-term unemployment levels remain above 155,000;
recognises the Government’s commitment to:
— prioritise actions to stimulate employment creation and reduce unemployment under the Action Plan for Jobs and Pathways to Work strategies;
— focus attention on initiative for young unemployed people;
— resource a broad range of interventions to support the jobseeker access education, training, internships and work placements; and
— provide opportunities for over 25,000 placements on community employment, 7,500 placements on Tús and 3,000 placements on Gateway to support jobseekers back to work and to underpin the delivery of important services of benefit to communities;
welcomes:
— the commencement of the roll-out of Gateway in county and city councils;
— the practical and social benefits Gateway offers the jobseeker to re-engage with work;
— the continued positive feedback from participants on Community Employment and Tús, work placements programmes similar to Gateway and the enormous success of JobBridge, the national internship scheme;
— the ongoing development of Government initiatives to support jobseekers in terms of further education and training, reskilling and activation, with a view to availing of opportunities as they arise in the economy;
— the continued positive contribution in terms of service support at a local level that schemes such as Gateway can offer; and
— the proposals made to the European Commission to support young people to get back into work;
commends:
— the commitment of county and city councils to deliver on Gateway and the positive outcomes it can have for jobseekers;
— the fact that 15% of places on Gateway will be reserved for those aged under 25; and
— the ongoing commitment of the Minister for Social Protection and the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to the development and role of Gateway."
I wish to share my time with Deputies Heather Humphreys and Jim Daly. I have listened with some interest to the debate but I am somewhat perplexed. Every independent commentator on the Irish welfare system has observed that we were trapping people in idleness, that we divorced the payments system from the activation system, and that we did not create the developmental welfare system whereby people on welfare are supported to take on new opportunities.
The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, is seeking to turn our welfare system completely around to make it a system for helping people to avail of new opportunities to develop their skills. Most particularly, it aims to help people who have been a long time out of work. The Pathways to Work scheme is not just about developing new skills. The Intreo offices are a new approach, a one-stop-shop approach where cash payments and information on opportunities are provided. These offices provide active engagement with the welfare system with the promotion of job search and training opportunities and giving people the opportunity to move on from the live register.
There has been criticism of the failure to deal with our welfare system in the crash. The Minister for Social Protection is taking on this task. She inherited a difficult situation which many here have acknowledged. Long-term unemployment was exceedingly high, at 150,000 in 2011, but today that figure has been decreased to just over 100,000. The number of long-term unemployed, as reported by the quarterly national household survey, has dropped by well over 25%, nearly by one third. That is a significant achievement against a backdrop of a serious problem. This has been built on real opportunities for helping people who are out of work to develop their skills. The Opposition shadow spokespersons will know that the probability of a person getting work falls dramatically past the six months, 12 months, 18 months and two years out of work. The probability after 18 months out of work is only one tenth, a one in ten chance, of getting placed, compared with a 50% chance of work in the early stages of unemployment. There is a well-documented and proven problem that the longer a person remains on the live register, the more difficult it is to access opportunities. That is combined with the damage to self-esteem, the ability to self-start, and to see a pathway to develop skills. We have very consciously sought to develop alternative opportunities.
It is interesting that the motion has picked the Gateway scheme which is one of what I reckon to be about 115,000 alternative opportunities being provided by this Government to assist people to develop their skills. Gateway provides about 3,000 opportunities out of 115,000. Even the Opposition will have to admit that the range of options offers a wide scope. Deputies rightly spoke about the need for training and education and for a different mix. The range is there for all to see. I was amazed that not a single speaker mentioned Springboard, which is designed for a person who has been out of work who wants to reskill and change direction, or MOMENTUM, which is a scheme on the job and off the job. There are 6,000 people on Springboard and 6,500 people on MOMENTUM.
Deputies referred to JobBridge but solely in a critical way. The truth about JobBridge is that 60% of those who have participated in it have been placed either directly with the sponsoring company or with other companies. This is a very high placement rate. The vocational training and opportunities scheme has 5,000 people in education programmes. Twenty-five thousand people are participating in back to education schemes. The intention of the Government in introducing Gateway is to provide a broad range of options which need to include intensive training elements and a mix of options and also work experience as an objective. Gateway does not pretend to be a Springboard or a MOMENTUM. It is another option in a menu of options.
It is not an option for those who are put on it.
It is important to see this in the context of a range of schemes. I refer to the additional part-time training which is available to a person on the Gateway scheme. FÁS provides approximately 15,000 part-time training courses. JobsPlus is the new grant scheme targeted at people who have been unemployed more than one or two years. A total of 1,600 people are participating in that scheme and 60% of them have been more than two years unemployed. This scheme has been very successful in targeting that cohort which is difficult to place. The same is true of Gateway which is targeting a group of people who are particularly difficult to place in order to find real work opportunities for them.
Where better to look for such opportunities than to our local authorities. They are established in the community with a very strong work ethic and human resources and other support structures to provide a good working environment for participants. Pretending that local authorities are some form of sweat shops as portrayed by the Opposition is an insult to local authorities and to the way in which they will deal with the participants in the schemes. They work to the highest standards in the workplace. They provide the supports needed by people who have been long-term unemployed. I make no apology for having this range of alternatives, including Gateway, which provides 19.5 hours work a week. People complain that €208 a week, an additional €20 a week, is a very low payment. It is not a high payment but I have never heard people rail against community employment which has been a feature of our system for years and 25,000 people are employed on community employment schemes. They are given the opportunity to work, to develop their skills with a placement rate of 26% for work. That rate could be higher. We need a range of programmes and we need to see people progress from a scheme that takes them from being in a very difficult place in their lives and moves them to something in which they can progress. Local authorities have the structures to help people develop their skills and interests. Participants are given a chance to learn about different aspects of local authority work and to gain experience. The hope is that they will progress their skills and move on. This is the process we are seeking to evolve and it has been successful. In 2013, 137,500 people left the live register to take up employment.
This notion that the jobs we are creating are not available to people on the live register is simply incorrect. In fact, as I have outlined, significant numbers are leaving the live register to take up employment.
Pathways to Work is one part of our strategy to get people back into employment. Deputy Crowe denigrated the information we provide and claimed we are all about public relations when it comes to job creation. The Central Statistics Office is not a PR agent of the Department. It has been gathering statistics year in and year out for as long as I have been around and is highly respected for the way in which it presents its information. Opposition Members are entitled to attack Government policy, but the Deputy will admit-----
I am saying there are other factors to consider in terms of how the figures are collated.
We cannot have a question and answer session.
I do not mind the Deputy intervening.
The Minister has been allocated time to make his contribution. Deputy Crowe will have an opportunity to respond later in the debate.
I made the point that one must take into account emigration in assessing the figures.
The increase in employment of 61,000 in the past 12 months - or 66,500 if one looks only at the private sector - is nothing to do with increased emigration. These are extra people at work in Ireland today. Emigration could be any number, but the fact is there are additional people in work who were not in work 12 months ago. The past five quarters have seen increases in the employment rate. Over that period, we have seen well over 80,000 additional people at work in the private sector, which is a dramatic improvement on what went before. Deputy Crowe knows as well as I do that the preceding years saw net reductions in employment, of 160,000 in one year, for example, and 50,000 in another. Now we are seeing enterprises being created and new opportunities opening up.
Our challenge is to ensure those who are out of work get a fair crack at the 66,500 new opportunities in the private sector. That is what Pathways to Work is all about. The figure of 137,500 people coming off the live register gives an indication that there is a lift for those who are out of work, but we need to keep working at it. The Deputy is right that it is sometimes easier for companies to hire somebody straight from school rather than from the live register. That is why we have introduced schemes like JobsPlus, which offers a subsidy of €72 per week to employers who take on a person who has been out of work for 12 months or more. Where people are out of work for two years, which is the cohort about which we are talking with Gateway, the subsidy increases to €100 per week for two years. These types of incentives are vital to creating a level playing pitch in the recruitment race for such opportunities.
We are trying to provide a range of options for those who are out of work. In that context, I absolutely defend our having a programme run by the local authorities which offers real work experience in a well-organised workplace. It is really worthwhile and something we ought to promote. It is not fair for Deputy Crowe to come in here and present it as some type of slave labour scheme. He must consider the whole spectrum of what is being offered, including Springboard, JobBridge and JobsPlus. There is a range of different offers with which we are seeking to match people's needs.
The other issue with which the Deputy was concerned is the expectation that if people are offered an opportunity, they will participate. The reality is that this is a well-established principle that applies right across all the activation regimes in Europe of which I am aware. As a joint member, with the Minister for Social Protection, of the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council, I am aware that the concept of a contract whereby people are expected, where they get a reasonable offer, to take it up is generally accepted across all EU member states. The notion that there is some expectation and therefore some sanction if people refuse to participate in worthwhile programmes is the norm right across the system and reflects the concept of a developmental welfare system. The National Economic and Social Council pronounced on this issue some years ago, but perhaps it was not sufficiently heeded. The principle is that this is a two-way street - that Government creates a range of options which give people a chance to develop themselves, but there is also an expectation that they will engage. All the evidence I have seen supports this approach. I used to participate in the National Economic and Social Forum and all pillars of that forum accepted this notion of a contract whereby Government creates opportunities and there is an expectation that people will avail of them. That is the correct approach and it is the one adopted in most countries, including those which are not facing as great an unemployment challenge as we are. The longer people are out of the workplace the more difficult it is to place them and the more demoralised they can become. The system we have been developing is one over which we absolutely can stand.
The Deputy referred to the need to develop new training opportunities, a point with which I entirely agree. We are at a pivotal point where we need to see a much stronger commitment by employers to develop traineeships, apprenticeships and new forms of training. One of the problems we had, which was aggravated by the Celtic tiger boom years, was that everybody was of the view that the academic route was the route to go and employers allowed good traineeships to decay. My colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Ciarán Cannon, and his officials have highlighted the fact that there used to be 40 traineeship programmes but now there are only 18. That decline did not happen because the State was not willing to support those programme but because the on-the-job element required to make them a success was lacking. Another factor was that apprenticeships fell through the floor with the collapse of the construction sector.
The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, has recently published a review of apprenticeships. We are at a point now where we can, with considerable confidence for the future, push out new models of traineeship and apprenticeship and seek to encourage employers to buy into that effort on a more permanent basis. If one considers the countries in Europe that have weathered the recession better than we have, a strong tradition of maintaining traineeships and apprenticeships is most likely a feature. Commentators often cite Germany and Austria in this regard, with particular reference to the so-called mittelstand companies where this has been a feature. These are strong companies that have been able to withstand the recession. We, too, need to build an industrial base of companies which will make that type of commitment to training. As I understand it, SOLAS will produce its own strategy statement within weeks. One of its main challenges, as I see it, will be to build out that platform for our growing private sector.
That roll-out presents an opportunity to link apprenticeships with State contracts, as has been successfully done in the North. We can learn from what has been done there.
The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, is considering that concept of building a social clause into public contracts, which would include, for instance, a quota of apprentices from the live register. I understand it is being piloted and there is an ambition to expand. I hope we are coming to a point in our economic recovery where more employers will be willing to engage with that. I have heard a number of sectoral groups making the argument that they could increase the numbers they employ if they had the appropriate trainees. It takes two to tango in this regard and we cannot expect the State to do everything.
I am somewhat disappointed at the negative tone of the Sinn Féin motion and I cannot support it for that reason. I accept that we need to have a spectrum of offerings, which is what we are seeking to do. The emphasis in the motion on training and opportunity is right, but I absolutely defend the Gateway programme within local authorities.
It involves high quality work places and good people to work with. It is a good experience to shadow people with real skill in a workplace that has high standards and is a good working environment. Like the community employment scheme, which has also been good, as Deputy Ó Snodaigh said, this scheme offers a good opportunity. I have never heard a moment's criticism of community employment, which is set up on the same basis. I think this scheme will also prove itself to be good. It is not the answer to our unemployment problem. It constitutes less than 3% of the offering that the Departments are making to people who are out of work. That is all it is. If it is seen in that perspective, it will be clear that it fits into a spectrum of offering. I agree that we have a long way to go as we try to turn the tide. That is acknowledged in our amendment. We still have an unemployment rate of approximately 12%. We still have a net emigration level of 35,000. We need to build on the positive things that are happening. We should exploit the new training and work experience opportunities that are emerging in parts of the private sector that have been pretty much closed to any thinking about recruitment, training or apprenticeships for the last four or five years.
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this evening's debate on the Gateway scheme. Since the recent announcement of the roll-out of Gateway placements to local authorities, I have received a number of inquiries from constituents who would like to know how they can apply for placements. While the Opposition will oppose for the sake of it, I have absolutely no doubt that this scheme will be welcomed by many people. The aim of the Gateway scheme is to try to help the long-term unemployed back into the workforce. When a person has been out of work for a number of years, it affects their confidence. Such people can quickly lose track of the regular daily routine. Some unemployed people stay up late at night and stay in bed late the following day not through laziness, but because they do not have a purpose for getting up in the morning. When a person falls into this trap, it can have a devastating impact on his or her mental health.
We are all familiar with the success of programmes like Tús, the community employment scheme and the rural social scheme. Last week, I was contacted by a constituent who completed a 12-month term on a community employment scheme last year and is now very eager to apply for a Gateway placement. When I inquired into the matter, I discovered that he is not eligible for Gateway because the period he spent on a community employment scheme does not count towards the requirement to have spent 24 months as a jobseeker. The person in question was extremely disappointed to learn that he is ineligible. He could quite easily have sat at home and received his jobseeker's payment, but instead he wanted to work and engage with the system. He told me he was fed up looking at the same four walls throughout the day and he wanted an opportunity to do something productive. I ask the Minister to give serious consideration to allowing time spent on programmes like the community employment and Tús schemes to count towards the requirement to have spent 24 months as a jobseeker. Alternatively, it should be possible for some discretion to be shown at local level when eligibility for the Gateway scheme is being determined.
I welcome the decision to provide 55 placement opportunities each to Monaghan and Cavan county councils this year and thereby allow participants in the scheme to gain valuable work experience. I do not doubt that this will assist them when they try to secure employment in the future. At the same time, they will be contributing to their local communities. I have listened to some of the scaremongering with regard to this scheme. It is not true that college graduates will be forced to take up work such as cleaning streets. Indeed, the manner in which this has been suggested is insulting to the hard-working people who currently carry out such necessary work on behalf of local authorities. The selection process for Gateway placements will involve an interview and a skills-matching process. I have no doubt that the Department of Social Protection and the local authorities will seek to ensure participants are matched with placements that are suitable to their qualifications and experience.
I want to commend the Minister, Deputy Burton, on her proactive approach to labour activation. The Opposition is continuing to criticise schemes like JobBridge, but there is overwhelming evidence that they are helping people to find their way into the workforce. I believe the Gateway scheme will have a similarly positive impact on many people. It will give them an opportunity to put their existing work skills into practice, thereby standing them in good stead when they are seeking employment in the future. I will conclude by asking the Minister again to take on board my suggestion that it should be possible for periods of time spent on community employment schemes to count towards the requirement to have spent 24 months as a jobseeker.
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to tonight's debate on the merits of the Gateway scheme. I would like to clarify some of the misconceptions that have deliberately been introduced to the discussion on this matter by people who are more interested in political opportunism than in genuine or real concern for the well-being of unemployed people. I welcome the measures that have been introduced by the Department of Social Protection since this Government came into office. The Department is moving away from the era when its role was confined to merely issuing cheques to the unemployed. We often hear about the dignity of people. I think there is nothing more degrading than issuing someone a cheque week in, week out to keep them at home, rather than making a real and meaningful effort to help them get back into the labour force. I commend the Minister and the Government on the steps they have taken to make changes in the Department. While it is a slow process, it is a very productive one. Many people in my constituency are extremely grateful for the opportunities that are now being offered to them by the Department of Social Protection.
The Gateway scheme gives people an opportunity to take up temporary part-time employment for 22 months. They get €11 an hour for working 19.5 hours a week. Participants in the scheme are entitled to take up other part-time work, if they are willing and able to do so, without having any penalty applied to what they are paid. The minimum payment anyone can receive is €208 a week, but this can increase to €400 a week depending on the person's circumstances. The 19.5 hours of work in a structured environment that is involved in this scheme can be undertaken in any of a wide variety of placements in the local authority sector. The compulsion element of this scheme has been much maligned in this House and other forums. The reality is that people will not be made to do something they do not want to do. The councils and the local authorities will be at pains to help individuals to match their skill bases with the wide and varied array of jobs that are undertaken by local authorities day in, day out. Anyone who has a genuine reason for not being able to take up a placement will have no difficulty whatsoever. The reality is that there is an element of people who are double-jobbing while drawing benefits or not making any effort to find work. That has to be targeted. I welcome that aspect of this scheme.
A degree of hypocrisy is evident in Sinn Féin's opposition to this scheme. The youth employment scheme in the North of Ireland, which is very similar to this scheme, offers people £15.38 a week in addition to their benefits. Their hypocrisy in coming down to the South to oppose the very same scheme brings partitionism to a new low.
I did not come down to the South, or from the North.
That is dividing Ireland, North and South.
I live in this city.
Such hypocrisy is not helping to build a united Ireland for all of the people.
The Deputy is an ignoramus.
Please, Deputy.
He is an ignoramus - I will say that.
John came to my office on Monday. It was his third visit to me in as many weeks. He is 39 years of age. He receives a welfare payment of €309 every week. He has been begging me to use any influence I have to get him a placement on this scheme. He has been out of work for four years. For the sake of his children and his wife, he wants the dignity of having something to do. He wants to be able to get up in the morning, go out to work with a group of people, be part of a team and contribute to society. I would like Deputy Ó Snodaigh to do me a favour by asking his party leader, Deputy Adams, to correct the record of this House.
The Deputy can ask him himself.
During Leaders' Questions last week, when I was not in a position to defend myself, Deputy Adams misrepresented me by misquoting a statement I had made on a television programme, "Prime Time", the previous night. I said on "Prime Time" that the Gateway scheme gives people an opportunity to learn what it is like to get up in the morning, go out to work, be part of a team and work as part of a group. Deputy Adams chose to misinterpret and misrepresent me in this House by saying I thought the scheme "was teaching unemployed people what it is like to get up in the morning". I ask Deputy Ó Snodaigh to convey to his party leader my request for him to have the decency and the courtesy to correct the record of the House.
The Deputy has a pen and paper, so he can do it himself.
When I vote on this motion tomorrow night, I will be thinking of John and many other people. Unfortunately, all I can do with John's file is add it to the heap of other files in my office relating to people who want to participate in the Gateway scheme. Tomorrow night, I will think about the many fathers who have contacted me on behalf of their 22, 23 and 24 year old sons or daughters who have not worked for three or four years and would love an opportunity to get on this scheme.
The scheme offers them a chance for real dignity and real participation. With them in mind I will be supporting the Government's amendment to the motion tomorrow night.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this motion, which we will be supporting. It mainly concerns the Gateway scheme, which everyone knows is a very different scheme from the community employment scheme. While I am not trying to be partisan or unduly critical, I never thought I would see the day when a Government, one third of which is made up of Labour Party members and which could not continue in office but for their support, would even contemplate something like this, let alone implement it. While they have not come in here tonight, I am amazed that they could go to the media outside and justify it. This is workfare, pure and simple. It is undisguised, unabashed, in-your-face workfare.
At the time of the last Conservative Party conference in the United Kingdom what the British Government was doing on social welfare loomed large. I was asked to write a newspaper article at the time comparing and contrasting the Irish Government's approach and the British Government's approach. Having studied the proceedings of the Conservative Party conference, I cannot say I was surprised, but I was certainly very disappointed at the underlying philosophy - the barely concealed contempt for the unemployed, which is typical of the Conservative Party right wing. That is the social welfare policy being pursued by the present British Government, tempered to some extent by the presence of the Liberal Democrats in government. I have been amazed at the extent to which that thinking and policy is being followed to a greater extent in this country by a Government that includes the Labour Party. The two policies and philosophies are beginning to converge.
The precursor to this scheme appeared in the last budget whereby young people under the age of 26 would have their social welfare, which is paltry enough - perhaps it is all the country can afford but in the great scheme of things it is paltry - slashed if they allegedly were not prepared to participate in non-existent training schemes or because they could not get non-existent jobs. No account was taken of the fact that at the time there were at least 32 applicants for every job vacancy. Despite the so-called employment creation of the past 12 months, the ratio is probably not much better - it has probably improved by virtue of emigration in the past 12 months. It is demonstrable that insufficient places were provided to satisfy the needs of everybody who wanted a training place. Even though they did not have the opportunity of getting a training place, their social welfare, paltry as it may have been, was slashed. In other words they were punished for being unemployed.
However, it was the underlying philosophy that disturbed me most. The snide inference was that the young unemployed in this country are a lazy, idle, shiftless lot who would prefer to spend their time lolling around the place rather than taking up any of the numerous well-paid jobs that are available, or who do not want to take up any of the well-established training or education places that would qualify them for such a job. That is a false image and the Government should have long since apologised for trying to create that image. Some Labour Party backbenchers went so far as to paint a picture of people sitting around for seven nights a week watching flat-screen televisions rather than getting off their backsides and going out and looking for work that was no doubt there. It was the Norman Tebbit philosophy of "get on your bike" and if people just try hard enough they will get a job or a training place so there is no need to pay them the full rate of social welfare - in fact why should they be getting paid any social welfare at all?
This proposal is not just more of the same - it goes much further. Despite all the Johns, Marys and everybody else who might want to participate in the scheme, it is not a question of people choosing or looking to participate in the scheme if they wished. The reality is as follows. Certain people who are unfortunate to be long-term unemployed will be selected - by what process nobody knows, least of all themselves. They will be summoned into the Department of Social Protection and told they will have to work on a scheme and if they do not to it their welfare will either be reduced or suspended entirely. In other words the Department of Social Protection will starve them out when their welfare is suspended entirely. That is the reality. The individuals have no choice in the matter despite what has been said here tonight. They have no opportunity to refuse or question what is being imposed on them and they have no right of appeal, as I understand it.
The job they will be offered will, as has been said, be outdoor work, often hard enough labour, for a local authority for half a working week for the following two years for the princely sum of €1 per hour on top of the social welfare they would have been getting anyway. I believe the girls in the textile factories in China were being paid a bit more than that even in Mao Zedong's time. I recently pointed out to the Minister for Social Protection that the internationally accepted poverty standard, 60% of median income, is in this country for a single individual about €210 per week. The rate of social welfare at €188 per week is approximately €20 shy of that. The Minister's response was that such people would have a medical card, which she claims is worth €1,000 and therefore they exceed the poverty line.
I wonder what happens here to people on medical cards. Let us consider a single individual who is in receipt of €188 per week jobseeker's allowance. As it stands he is €4 a week over the limit for a medical card but because his only income is social welfare he will get the medical card. As this will notionally take him another €20 a week over the limit, will he lose his medical card? On the face of it, it would seem that he does. If he does, then he is back to square one.
While I have not had time to study this in detail yet, I am assured there will also be PRSI implications. Therefore having lost the medical card he is back to €188, his disposable income falls by the extent by which he loses through having to pay PRSI. More importantly, going to work involves costs, including transport costs. Not every local authority can have its place of employment on somebody's doorstep so it will cost something to go to work. Therefore the person's disposable income falls further. Such people are now being told that if they do not take up a job where they will be working for half a week, locked in for the following two years, they will lose their social welfare. The job will pay them a minus income because their disposable income will be less than it was before they took up the so-called job in the first place.
There is something seriously wrong with this. The scheme was initially sold because of the training content. While the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation distanced himself somewhat from that this evening, he still adverted to it in some ways.
Regarding the jobs that are in contemplation, we all know what they are and I do not belittle them in any way but we must deal with reality. I do not believe training will be required to do those jobs, and they will not give people any training for future participation in the workforce. What type of training does one get picking up litter in the park, washing graffiti off walls or standing in a gap preventing animals moving from one space to another? We must put an end to this nonsense about training. There is no training element in this scheme.
The Taoiseach stated recently in this House that the purpose of the scheme was to get people into the habit of work because if they are long-term unemployed they have lost the habit of work but experience demonstrates that the people of this country are not work-shy. The reverse is the case. When we had full employment people availed of the opportunities that existed. The best way to get a person into the habit of work is to give them a job. If the jobs are available, they will apply for them. The need and desire to work is deeply ingrained in the Irish psyche. If nothing else proves that it is proved by the fact that in the past three years alone, 0.25 million people or one in eight of the adult population of this country left their kith and kin and the security of home to go to strange lands to seek employment when they could not get it here. That is a reality. The vast majority of those were young people under the age of 26 because the youth cohort of the Irish population has fallen from 16% to 12% in recent years. That is caused by emigration.
I say this from the heart, and I am not being party political, but I am disappointed that the Labour Party Members have not come into the House tonight to listen to this debate. Is it that they cannot bear to listen to it or are they watching it on the monitors? I hope that is the case because we are living in the era of opinion polls. Various opinion polls are giving different results. I never take much account of opinion polls. I do my own opinion poll on a regular basis knocking on doors in Limerick and I can say to the Labour Party, particularly to the new young Labour Deputies who may still have a spark of idealism, that their situation on the ground is worse than the worst opinion polls I have seen.
It beggars belief that the Labour Party would stand by and support something that flies in the face of everything it ever professed to believe in. If those younger members of the Labour Parliamentary Party are holding on in the belief that a few months before the Government's constitutional term runs out they can pull the plug and say to the people that they have finally seen through Fine Gael, rediscovered their principles and will not take any more, it will not wash. What happened in 1987 proved that. It is getting very late now for the Labour Party to redeem itself. This would not be a bad chance at redemption. The younger Labour Deputies should approach their Ministers tomorrow, the people who represent them in the Government, and tell them that this is a bridge too far and that it is anathema to everything Labour believes in and has ever stood for. They should tell them to withdraw their opposition to this motion and rethink the situation. It is not a question of the Opposition taking political credit. It is simply a matter of doing what is right.
There are several imaginative alternatives to this scheme, some of which were mentioned earlier. I could mention the part-time jobs opportunities put forward every year in conjunction with the budget by Social Justice Ireland. Those are innovative, useful, socially responsible employment opportunity schemes but I did not believe I would live long enough or be a Member of this House long enough to see the Labour Party supporting this scheme.
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate on the Gateway so-called local authority labour activation scheme. It should be called the local authority slave labour scheme. It amazes me that somebody in the Department sat down and came up with that. To insult unemployed people by forcing them to take up a so-called job with a local authority, which is supposed to be an activation scheme, for €1 an hour on top of their social welfare payment is a disgrace. The type of work identified within the local authorities includes village enhancement schemes, landscaping, tourism ambassadors, control of animals, and libraries yet there is no training or education value in that. What does an unemployed person who is unfortunate enough to be selected for one of these schemes and takes it up get out of it? They get €20 a week for 22 months for participating in this scheme.
This Government should lift the embargo on local authorities to allow them employ staff. In my town of Killybegs the library closed two years ago because the librarian retired and the council could not replace her because of the embargo. The library services were withdrawn from the community because of this embargo operated by the Government. How can somebody be put to work in a library without training them in how to do the job, which would ensure they get value out of it? There is no training or education budget as part of this scheme.
An unemployed person came into my office last week and the first question they asked was why the only jobs advertised in Donegal are community employment, CE, schemes or internships. That is a good question, and it shows that this Government's jobs policy is defunct in terms of rural areas when all that unemployed people can look for is a CE scheme or an internship. They now have the added advantage of considering the Gateway scheme also.
This is the type of meaningless employment activation scheme to which this Government is reduced. The only reason it can be introducing it is to massage the figures on the live register. Much was made of the fact that the live register figures have dropped below 12% in recent weeks but there are over 85,000 people on so-called labour activation schemes who are not included in the live register figures. People are in internships or on Gateway schemes for no pay. They are still unemployed people and they should be included in the figures.
It is interesting to those of us on this side of the House, particularly many of the Independents, Sinn Féin and, one would have thought, the Labour Party, that if one was watching television at home and the Conservative Party in England or Margaret Thatcher if she were still alive came up with this idea one would be aghast, as are many people. I am aware from speaking to some people on unemployment benefit, and there are many in Waterford, which has one of the highest rates, that they find it offensive, humiliating and soul destroying. It is offensive and humiliating because this is the best the Government can offer people who are unemployed. This is what it is offering to young people who might have left school with qualifications but who, through no fault of their own, cannot go any further or get a sustainable job. The Government is offering them €1 an hour. It is outrageous. Deputy O'Dea is correct. I cannot understand how anyone in the Labour Party would support this measure. The Government is telling people they must work for €1 an hour. If we heard of that happening in India or South America every Member in this House would be outraged. It is camouflaging statistics. All of these people will be taken off the live register. Someone from Fine Gael made an appalling statement last week to the effect that it was creating 300 jobs a week. Are these the 300 jobs a week that it is creating?
The problem is that the Government is not fooling anyone. It is not fooling the unemployed, the media or the people who will have to take up these jobs. It is fooling itself, and all the statistics and the opinion polls are showing that people no longer believe the Government. All this guff about how the Government will deal with unemployment, treat people with dignity and create sustainable jobs means nothing when it comes up with harebrained schemes such as this one. My hope is that those people in that scheme will join a union, go on strike and bring it down around itself.
Debate adjourned.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 9.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 12 March 2014.