Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 October 2013
29. Deputy Thomas P. Broughan asked the Minister for Social Protection her plans to introduce measures to enable persons in receipt of carer's allowance to participate in community employment schemes or training courses provided by her Department in view of the limitations on carers in pursuing further education, training or employment. [43132/13]
View answerThere are certain conditions placed on persons in receipt of carer’s allowance. For example, they cannot be engaged in employment, self-employment, training or education courses outside the home for more than 15 hours a week as this would impact on their caring responsibilities. Community Employment involves working a 19½ hour week, so by taking up a CE position they would be in breach of this rule, which would cause the payment to cease.
However, when a person’s caring responsibilities cease, they can transfer to a CE-qualifying social welfare payment (e.g. jobseeker’s allowance) for at least 1 week and have their cumulative time spent in receipt of carer’s allowance and their current payment counted towards the 12 month CE-qualifying period (e.g. 51 weeks on carer’s allowance plus 1 week on jobseekers allowance will qualify the person for one year on CE).
There are no plans to introduce further measures in this regard in relation to participation on Community Employment schemes.
