Community Employment Schemes Dail Éireann — 2021-11-25 ============================================================ Joe O'Brien (GP), Dublin Fingal What is wrong is Covid-19. I think that is the simple, immediate answer. We are still recovering from it. The referral process is still recovering from it, but it is recovering. In September and October, we had 613 or 614 new starters. Comparably, the figure for October 2019 was 726. We are therefore getting back to a monthly starter rate that is getting closer to normal times. However, on referrals, there have been between 1,200 and 1,500 per month in recent months. It is going in the right direction. The activation services are up to speed in capacity now. That was not the case previously. However, since the economy has re-opened that has been the case. Some 100 new job coaches have been appointed as well, since the pathways to work strategy. We are in a recovery phase. It is going in the right direction, but we have some distance to go yet. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-11-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:52+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-11-25