I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I wish to raise on the Adjournment the need to ensure that people on community employment schemes get their full entitlement to secondary benefits and have those benefits for the duration of the scheme.
A serious anomaly has come to my attention with regard to this matter. It seems that the officials in the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs are being devilishly clever in the operation of the community employment scheme. In the 1996 budget the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Quinn, extended medical card benefits to all who had been unemployed for a period of 12 months for a period of three years on taking up employment. Anybody on the live register was entitled to hold on to their medical card and that applied to people coming on FÁS community employment schemes. It was a welcome development in terms of encouraging people to come from the ranks of the long-term unemployed into the workforce. Many people availed of it, particularly lone parents.
However, it transpires that there is an interpretation of the provision whereby anybody who was on a scheme at the time of its introduction, when the social employment schemes only extended for two years, should not now be considered for medical cards for the third year because they were contracted into a two year scheme. This is a mean and petty interpretation of the budgetary provision. It was meant to extend the community employment schemes to three years and that the benefits would extend to cover its duration. I do not know who is responsible for this bureaucratic interpretation which will bring about minimal savings.
The promotional material put abroad by FÁS is contrary to the Department's interpretation. People on schemes have been told by the supervisors that for the three years of the scheme they are entitled to the medical card. The Department's interpretation means that people who might be anxious to take the third year will have to forego it because of the importance of the medical card to families with young children. This interpretation is counterproductive and I cannot understand why the Department has gone back on what appeared at the time to be a straightforward commitment.
With regard to the other secondary benefits, including supplementary welfare allowance, rent allowance, back to school clothing allowance, footwear and fuel allowances, they apply for the duration of the scheme regardless of whether it is for one, two or three years. However, because they are means tested they effectively rule out any head of a household involved in a community employment scheme. Effectively, the medical card and the other secondary benefits are lost and this discourages people from continuing on the schemes.
The Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs has indicated that it has established an independent review body to look into the effects of secondary benefits on the labour market and people coming on to it. The operation of the scheme at present is a disincentive to people coming from the live register on to the labour market. It is a petty interpretation of the rules which will save very little money because it only covers about a year. There are large numbers of long-term unemployed and it has proved one of the most stubborn categories to tackle. Even with a booming economy the numbers of long-term unemployed are being reduced at a dismally slow rate.
The matter should be clarified with a positive interpretation as intended in January 1996 when the budgetary provision extended the secondary benefits, particularly the medical card, to the participants of community employment schemes and that all participants on the live register for 12 months could have benefits for three years so that they might get established in employment and develop a future for themselves and their families.