Work schemes such as Tús and Community Employment (CE) are positive initiatives that enable the long-term unemployed to make a contribution to their communities whilst up-skilling themselves for prospective future employment. These schemes help to break the cycle of unemployment and improve a person’s chances of returning to the labour market. The rural social scheme (RSS) provides farmers and fishermen with income support while they also make a contribution to their communities.
The CE scheme has a budget to support approximately 21,900 participant places in 2018 and 21,500 places in 2019. At the end of October, there was a total of 21,243 participants on the scheme. This leaves a total of 657 budgeted vacancies this year.
CE schemes are typically sponsored by groups (known as sponsors) wishing to benefit the local community. My Department agrees participant numbers annually with each CE sponsor organisation who are responsible for the recruitment of participants and for identifying suitable work placements. CE sponsors can promote their scheme vacancies within their local communities.
At a local level, various methods of promoting CE have been arranged between my Department and local schemes, including targeting potentially eligible jobseekers to attend a CE Job-fair, where details of CE vacancies and employment opportunities are provided.
In addition, CE sponsors can advertise their vacancies free of charge on the Department's JobsIreland website, www.jobsireland.ie. The process of posting vacancies is relatively straightforward and a tailored video is available online to assist sponsors.
The Deputy will appreciate that the welcome increase in the number of people at work and the continued reduction in Live Register numbers is a factor in recruitment to all work programmes. While participation on CE and Tús is a stepping stone back to employment, these positions are not full-time sustainable jobs.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that I have implemented a number of changes to the terms and conditions of participation on CE. The main purpose of these changes is to broaden the availability to a greater number of people on the Live Register and to standardise other conditions around the length of time a person can participate on a programme.
The general qualifying age for CE for those on the Live Register was reduced from 25 to 21 years. It is now easier for previous participants, who have exhausted their CE entitlement, to re-qualify as participation prior to the year 2007 is disregarded. There is an overall limit of 6 years participation from 2007 (7 years if on a disability payment). While participants between 21 and 55 years on CE are entitled to one year on the programme, this can be extended by up to 2 more years if they are engaged in a recognised training or education award that is helping them progress towards employment. All CE participants age 55 and over can avail of 3 consecutive years on a CE scheme. Since 1st June, I am also facilitating persons to take up a placement on CE or Tús while also attending their JobPath provider.
Participants over age 62 are allowed to participate on a continuous basis up to the State Pension age on the CE Service Support Stream (SSS), subject to availability of places on the SSS, satisfactory performance on the scheme and to annual approval by the Department. The places allocated for these participants within each individual CE scheme are subject to limitation criteria.
There are no plans to change the standard duration of participation on work schemes and it is considered that the existing durations are adequate to meet the programmes objectives.
Any IB or sponsor organisation who has any recruitment concerns should contact their nearest Intreo Centre who will provide assistance.
I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
