During the summer all major community projects and many major jobs initiatives were faced with the unilateral prospect of their numbers being cut by almost 5,000 by the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Harney, without any discussion with the social partners or reference to the standing committee on employment under Partnership 2000. A clear effort was made to reduce the resources available for measures to assist the unemployed to get sustainable jobs. It is clear the Minister was taking advantage of the current jobs climate to implement the Deloitte & Touche report which advocated the reduction of community employment places to less than 30,000, to increase the age eligibility and to restructure the programme in such a way that many of those who now avail of the scheme would be disadvantaged. When thousands of community employment workers marched past Dáil Éireann in recent weeks they were angry at the arrogant behaviour of the Minister and her Department.
It cannot be denied that the growth of the social economy has been facilitated and sustained by community employment over the past ten to 12 years. The initiative began in the mid 1980s when Deputy Quinn introduced SES. Many important local groups, such as development centres, small enterprise centres and unemployment centres, panicked when they were faced with the major difficulty of carrying on the valuable work they have done for our community over the past decade. Many primary and secondary schools were faced with great uncertainty, particularly in relation to school secretaries and other part-time workers such as caretakers and school assistants. It was difficult for principals to plan the programmes they would adopt in the 1999-2000 school year. However, none of this was heeded by the Minister. Despite a promise of 5,000 jobs during the discussions on the national development plan, consultation did not take place until last week when the Minister realised this issue would be raised in the Dáil.
As a director of an unemployment centre and a development centre, which employs more than 100 community employment workers at different times and has a good record in the northside partnership area of Dublin of placing those workers in long-term sustainable employment, I agree that the progression rates and individual development plans for those workers is an important aspect of the programme's development in the future and for advancing specific skills training and increasing the range of employment foundation courses. The Minister was ill advised in unilaterally reducing this programme.
A few weeks before the Dáil broke for the summer, Deputy Deenihan and I spoke about the future of the partnership companies. We wanted to know what would happen to the community developments after 1 January 2000. Workers played an important role in these developments through training or community employment. We felt the prospect for these projects was bleak as many of the senior staff who had implemented the programmes at local level were moving to different areas of the economy.
The Minister recently met a delegation from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and backed down on the worst aspects of her plan. I suggest that if she wants to develop this programme and look at ways in which it can be more closely linked with an active labour market programme, she should consult the workers, their representatives in the trade union movement and their employers and sponsorship groups. The Minister has behaved in a disgraceful and unilateral way.
