I understand the expansion is into areas where there are no local employment services and, of course, it is welcome but only if it is to remain in its current model. The Minister can say it as many times as she wants, but it is a fact that the current model is not for profit. Money is not a factor when a person comes through the door of the services for referral, but it is moving to a payment-by-results model. That is a fact. As regards consultation, I acknowledge it took place but I very much doubt that job clubs …

I am not arguing that point. How much money will an LES or job club need in order to bid for the tender? What I am hearing is that it is a significant tender and the organisations will need some kind of tendering consultant to try to match it and put in an application in the first place. I am really concerned about this. It is fine to say they are well positioned to apply for it but it will be very interesting to see how many do so because what the Minister has outlined is not what I am hearing on the ground. I hav…

My question is on people aged over 55 who are on community employment, CE, schemes. Is the Minister of State aware of the difficulties that arise when these people have to leave the community employment schemes because their time is up? Services and organisations are under pressure to replace the people leaving the schemes and in some cases, services can be lost. Will the Minister of State consider allowing people aged over 55 to remain on community employment schemes up to the age of 62, when they are no longer ob…

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I welcome the engagement he has had with CE schemes. I imagine that the matters raised in that engagement included the issues concerning the over 55s, specifically people leaving schemes and services not receiving the referrals they need to fill places. It is probably a good few months since I last checked but as of now, there are 2,406 vacancies on CE schemes advertised on the website. That is a huge number of vacancies. I met a disability group in County Roscommon a co…

I appreciate that Covid has played a role. The jobs website indicates the number of CE vacancies today is 2,406. It is a great shame that we have disability services with 26 posts they cannot fill. They can fill only 18. They tell me it is because they are not getting the referrals. Alarm bells should be ringing when this is happening. They should be ringing over the fact that we have over 2,000 vacancies. It is important that we acknowledge referrals to CE were reducing long before Covid. They were reducing all th…

When will the Minister publish the property impact assessment report that was carried out in regard to young jobseekers?

I appreciate that where young people take up a course or training, they get the full amount. That is more difficult now and has been during Covid. The majority of young people receiving jobseeker's payments are on reduced rates. It is not just due to age. Many of these people live at home and the whole household income is taken into account with regard to means, which can see them get less or nothing at all in some cases. The report about poverty and its impact is important. Sinn Féin tabled an amendment to the Soc…

They will say that we need to end the age-related payments, because it is not right to base a payment on age. It should never have been the case. It has caused poverty in many cases. I look forward to seeing that report. I hope that it will be published before the summer recess and well before the budget, because as the Minister said, the programme for Government contains a commitment to restore those payments to a single level. That should happen and I hope we will see steps towards it in the budget. The youth emp…

I wish to ask the Taoiseach about the announcement made yesterday about the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, to only extend access to it for an additional week when we are in the most uncertain of times in relation to Covid. Work will continue to be uncertain throughout the summer months. I listened to restaurant owners on the radio this morning who are dependent on weather apps to see whether they can open for dinner on a given evening. People who lose work beyond 7 July, through no fault of their own, should b…

I have been contacted by a number of young people, in particular in Roscommon and Galway, who had applied for their driver theory tests and been given their dates, but have since got letters cancelling them and rescheduling them. In one case, this has happened seven times. A young person who was due to do the theory test tomorrow has got a letter to say it is cancelled and rescheduled for 4 August, in six weeks' time. This is particularly a problem for young people in rural areas who want to take up summer work in …

There is a fundamental difference between the view of the Minister of State and the Government and our view when it comes to retirement. The Minister of State and the Government think it is appropriate for people at retirement to be paid a jobseeker’s rate of €203. We do not. The Minister of State and the Government think it is fine for workers who have paid into the Social Insurance Fund for decades - some for 30, 40 or more years - not to be able to access their pension at retirement. We do not. To be clear, we s…

Last week, the Alzheimer Society of Ireland published its research report on caring and coping with dementia during Covid-19. The report found family carers to be at breaking point, with their mental and physical well-being seriously affected. More than half of family carers were worried about how they would continue to cope. Carers spoke about the loss of day services, about community services being cut off overnight and of feeling like they were being left at the back of the queue for vaccines. Family carers have…

In 2020, over €3.6 million in direct payments went to just 20 farm enterprises, while average CAP payments in counties Roscommon and Galway are about €10,000 and many farmers receive much less. At the same time, some individuals are receiving between €200,000 and €400,000-plus in CAP payments. This is not right, it is not fair and it is something we should be fighting tooth and nail to end in these current negotiations. I welcome what the Minister said about confirming an upper limit of €60,000, which is what he is…

Last Friday, a tender was published to expand local employment services into four new areas. This would have been welcome had the local employment services been extended based on the existing service, which is community based and not for profit. Instead, the tender proposes a new payment-by-results model similar to that found in JobPath. It proposes the end of the community ethos and person-centred approach taken by the local employment services and job clubs and ends the vital walk-in services for those who are so…

I thank the Minister of State for her statement and I will focus my contribution on the e-mental health hub in Castlerea in my constituency, which replaced the former Rosalie dementia care unit for older people. I raised the funding issue in this Chamber three weeks ago after replies from the HSE to me confirmed funding for the e-mental health hub in Castlerea was not provided this year. I have confirmed this with the head of mental health services, who indicated that funding was provided last year to recruit four …

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important motion. It is now five years since the national maternity strategy was launched. It was hailed at the time as setting out radical reforms of maternity and neonatal services over a ten-year period. However, last year HIQA published a report following inspections of 19 maternity units and hospitals, during which it discovered that the HSE had no plan for how to implement the strategy. Years after launching the plan, the HSE did not know how it would be implemented.…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important legislation. I listened to the Minister of State. Despite, as he puts it, holding the insurance companies to account, nothing that has been done by the Government has reduced premiums. Premiums are still increasing. That is the problem. It is a great shame that we must constantly force the insurance companies to do the right thing when it comes to costs for customers. Worse, the Government fails to act on behalf of those customers the length and breadth of the St…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion, as someone who has grown up on and lives on a beef farm. In recent months, as the marts went online, it has given a great insight into what happens when farmers go to the mart. For example, on many days I had to write down the weight and the price that the cattle were getting during the bidding when I went to the mart. The farmer literally has to look at the price and take the decision as to whether to take them home or just let them go when the bid is well below th…

Will the Minister provide the timeline for the roll-out of the commitments made in Our Rural Future as promised?

I welcome the publication of this plan as someone who has lived in rural Ireland all of her life and who would live nowhere else. It is an ambitious plan and I acknowledge that. The difficulty is that while it is a five-year strategic plan, it is disappointing that the timelines were not there in the first place. The Minister referred to short-term and longer-term deliverables but, again, there is no distinction in the report or in the 150 commitments it contains. Much of the funding for the action plan is repackag…