CORI criticises cutbacks to scheme for the unemployed

Planned Government cutbacks to a scheme for the long-term unemployed are in breach of the national pay agreement, the Catholic Church's CORI Justice Commission has claimed.

The organisation said the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness contained a commitment that the number of Community Employment (CE) places should not go below 28,000 before 2003.

However, it said, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment had decided to cut the number of such places, available to unemployed people working in community projects, to 24,000 by the end of this year.

"The Department's decision to implement such drastic cuts has demonstrated substantial bad faith," said the commission. It noted the decision had been made without consulting the social partners, and without waiting for a review of social economy initiatives currently being conducted by the Labour Market Standing Committee, which is chaired by a senior Department official.

"Such unilateral action demonstrates a total lack of appreciation for the serious impact these decisions have," said the commission's director, Father Séan Healy.

"They have very detrimental effects on people who are unemployed, and on the local communities who depend on the services provided by the various community and voluntary organisations depending on the CE programme for financing."

The commission urged the Government to rethink its strategy on labour market programmes, focusing on the need to develop a specific scheme to fund the services being provided by the community and voluntary sector. Such services should not be forced to depend on funding which was available only if those employed to deliver them were long-term unemployed, it said. "Either these services [such as meals on wheels] are necessary, or they are not. If they are necessary then there should be a specific programme to finance such services."

The commission said a future strategy should also"go beyond what is already being done to provide an appropriate high-support programme for people who are unemployed to assist them in re-entering paid employment".

A spokeswoman for the Department said the CE scheme had been introduced to facilitate the long-term unemployed, and their numbers in the economy had since dropped significantly.

She added that FÁS, which operated the scheme, had "ringfenced" certain areas, such as drug rehabilitation facilities, which would not be affected by the cutbacks.