Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 23 June 2015
207. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if she considers it appropriate that many supervisors of community employment schemes are working on the same contracts as participants, as this is causing anxiety regarding their job security; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25075/15]
View answerSince Community Employment (CE) commenced in April 1994, the period for which a CE Sponsor contracts with a supervisor is a matter between the Sponsor as the employer, and the supervisor, as the employee. However, DSP funding is only provided for the duration of the Agreement that DSP has with the Sponsoring organisation which is on an annual basis.
Supervisors (and participants) are excluded from the Section 9 provisions of the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003, as under Section 2 of this Act they are, “employees with a contract of employment which has been concluded within the framework of a specific public or publicly-supported training, integration or vocational retraining programme”. This means that individual CE contracts for supervisors cannot be of indefinite duration. However, as supervisors are not subject to any participation caps, they can be employed by a Sponsor (subject to the satisfaction of the employer) on rolling contracts for as long as funding is available for the supervisor position.
