Galway County councillor Andrew Reddington has welcomed reforms to the Community Employment Scheme and Rural Social Schemes which allow participants to remain on them until retirement and other benefits.
The Headford-based councillor said that this is welcome news fir those on Community Employment Scheme and Rural Social Scheme.
He said that for the past two year, he has been engaging with Heather Humphreys in relation to the serious need to overall the Community Employment Scheme and the Rural Social Scheme within her department.
“In our rural areas we are dependent on these schemes to survive. Without a doubt rural towns and villages would close down with the support of the work that they are doing.
“I have sent several correspondences to the Minister directly in which I put forward several business cases to the Minister in which I showed nonsensical rules been enforced by the Department of Social Protection.
“We had people right across North Galway being let go from schemes who were not much more than the weekly social contribution, but were giving so much back to their community. I can’t emphasis enough how much work the CE scheme and RSS scheme do and the changes below are welcome.
The changes which were approved by Government include:
Age rules: The age from which participants can remain on CE until reaching pension age is now lowered to 60 years, (down from 62 years ). This rule will also now apply in respect of people aged 60 and over on the Rural Social Scheme.
Vacancies: A CE participant whose term has expired will be allowed remain on their scheme until a replacement participant is found. This will reduce the impact of vacancies on the scheme and ensure vital community services are maintained.
Improvements are also being introduced to increase and strengthen the process of referring unemployed candidates to CE schemes. In future, a minimum of 40% of unemployed people referred to schemes by the Department’s Intreo offices will be offered an opportunity to take up places on schemes. Local Intreo Offices will work closely with local schemes in implementing this new rule to ensure people are referred to placements which are suitable to their skill-set.
