Michael Collins
Question:339. Deputy Michael Collins asked the Minister for Social Protection to immediately review provisions of community employment scheme workers. [15009/16]
View answerWednesday, 8 June 2016
Questions (339)
Written answers
Community Employment (CE) is an active labour market programme designed to provide eligible long-term unemployed people and other specific disadvantaged groups with an opportunity to engage in part-time work and training within their communities on a temporary, fixed-term basis.
The pattern of participation on the Community Employment (CE) programme is dependent on the individual circumstance of each person and the length of time she has been in receipt of a CE-qualifying social welfare payment.
The current participation patterns have been in place since CE commenced in 1994. In general a person must be 12 months or more in receipt of a qualifying social welfare payment to be eligible for 1 year on CE. If a person is 3 years or more in receipt of a qualifying payment social welfare payment, and over 35 years, they are eligible for 3 consecutive years participation on CE.
Participants who are eligible for 1 year on CE may have their participation extended into a second consecutive year under certain circumstances but this extension is limited to a maximum of 10% of these places on a particular scheme.
An individual's cumulative lifetime participation on CE is limited to 3 years (156 weeks) for persons under 55 years of age, or 6 years (312 weeks) for persons of 55 years of age up to State Pension age.
The Department keeps the eligibility criteria for Community Employment (CE) places under on-going review to ensure that they are effective in targeting long-term unemployed jobseekers and other specific disadvantaged groups. The eligibility rules and maximum durations allowed for participants are strictly enforced to ensure the benefit of CE is available to the widest possible number of jobseekers.
With the ongoing welcome reductions in the live register I will be considering how best all work programmes, including CE, meet the needs of people remaining on the live register and others dependent on social welfare, in particular the long term unemployed and those most distant from the labour market. In any consideration of the scheme, it will be important also to be cognisant of the valuable community and voluntary services delivered to local communities.