100 community creches face closure

OVER 100 community creches could close, or be forced to severely cut back their services, if the Government goes ahead with a plan to curtail the payment of benefits to lone partners and those with disabilities working in Community Employment (CE) schemes.

Following replies to Dáil questions indicating the Government is set on implementing in the next budget a recommendation from the McCarthy report that “double payments” should be ended, SIPTU’s community branch said there was serious threat to services throughout economically disadvantaged areas.

In particular, community childcare will be severely impacted, as over 25% of staff are CE workers, with a high proportion dependent on welfare allowances.

SIPTU community sector lead organiser Darragh O’Connor said: “If people are faced with losing their welfare benefits if they continue working then it could result in most community creches, over 100 at least, losing a large number of their staff overnight.”

Mr O’Connor said: “CE is the backbone of the community sector. The absence of CE workers would have a devastating effect on community infrastructure, causing much of it to simply collapse.”

CE is a scheme funded through Fás which provides employment and training to 20,000 long-term unemployed people. The range of schemes on which CE workers are employed include childcare, youth projects, elder care, drug rehabilitation and environmental projects.

Mr O’Connor said: “Already there are restrictions on the amount of time people can partake in CE scheme employment. Generally, people get it for three years, which allows people to get up to a decent standard of training. Now it is being curtailed in many cases to one year, which is doing little more than getting people off the live register and fudging those numbers.”

Over 6,000 CE workers are in receipt of one parent family allowance or disability payments. Opponents of the proposed cuts say they will act as a financial disincentive and obstacle to lone parents and the disabled entering a CE scheme.

In reply to parliamentary questions from both Labour’s Joanna Tuffy and the Greens Paul Gogarty on the status of CE workers payments, the Minister for social Protection Éamon Ó Cuív said although no final decision had been made his department was actively considering the McCarthy report recommendation “that concurrent entitlement to a range of schemes, such as one parent family payment or disability allowance and a community employment payment, should be discontinued.

“My priority will be to ensure the overall Government strategy is advanced and to protect those most in need in a manner which is sustainable,” he said.

The weekly rate for a CE worker based on 19.5 hours for a participant without dependants is €216, for a participant with dependants the maximum is €346.10.