Door shuts on second chances

Cutbacks in the Jobs Initiative and Community Employment schemes are hitting those most in need of assistance, writes Kitty Holland

Jimmy Conroy doesn't know if he'll still have a job on Friday. The 60-year-old has been working for the past five years with Energy Action, a small business in the Liberties, Dublin, which installs insulation, smoke alarms, locks and burglar alarms in the homes of the elderly and disadvantaged. Energy Action provides the service free of charge.

"I love it. I love the work and the thank-yous you get from the people. It's like a great boost every day." Laid off from his printing job in 1984, Conroy was unemployed until he joined the Jobs Initiative (JI) scheme at Energy Action five years ago. "It was very difficult to work because of my age, you know. Once you're over 40, people out there don't want to know. I was living on £60 a week, sitting in the house all day. It was tough and after looking for work and getting knocked back for a year, you kind of start to give up. But this has been great - getting out to meet different people every day, the satisfaction, a great confidence boost. I love it," he says.

This Friday, however, Jimmy may become one of three JI employees Energy Action has to lay off. The company was told in June to identify three candidates for redundancy in order to comply with FÁS plans to lose 325 participants, nationally, from the JI scheme by the end of the year. FÁS said that the measure was necessary to make way for other potential beneficiaries of the scheme. Now it seems that those let go by the end of the year will not be replaced, with Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Frank Fahey, whose department has responsibility for the scheme, saying the cuts will go ahead. The target is to reduce the numbers on JI schemes from 2,525, to 2,200.

Energy Action now has 14 staff members on JI, down from 15 last year. This will fall to 11 on Friday. "And the numbers on CE [Community Employment\] are down by about 33 per cent," says Mary Mulligan, JI administrator at the company. "These are people who don't want to lose their jobs, who love their jobs. It's amazing how much they progress after they come here. And of course it's getting harder and harder to provide the service."

The JI and CE schemes are similar in that they aim to bring people, euphemistically described as "distant from the labour market", back into it. Run by FÁS, they are managed locally, offering work and training in sheltered environments to people who have few skills or who have not worked for many years.

The JI scheme is full-time and open to anyone over 35 who has been unemployed for more than five years. Participants are paid €298.40 a week. The CE scheme is part-time and open to anyone over 25 who has been unemployed for more than a year. Participants receive €149.20 a week, plus allowances for dependants. The cost of running the scheme is about €25 per person more than the provision of social welfare.

Widely regarded as having been enormously successful, the schemes have directed thousands of people - some of whom would have been regarded as unemployable - back into the workforce. They generally operate in non-profit operations that provide community services such as home helps, meals-on- wheels, childcare and environmental and heritage projects.

The rationale behind the cutbacks was that with the economy on the upturn there was less need for the schemes. However, with live register numbers rising for the first time in years - up to 170,822 last month - opposition to them has been gathering momentum.

An editorial in this newspaper in July called the cuts "recklessly premature", while Jack O'Connor, president of SIPTU, said the cuts showed the State to be treating workers "with a contempt which is characteristic of the most anti-union employers in the country".

Eric Conroy, general secretary of the Irish Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU), said the cuts were "another strike at the most marginalised in Irish society, to enable the Government to balance the books". The INOU is severely critical of the lack of consultation on the cuts, which were announced in last year's Estimates.

There are also concerns that CE participants, once they come to the end of their three-year placements, are not being replaced; that there are plans to eliminate the JI scheme altogether, returning 2,000 people to the live register, and that the manner in which the cuts in JI schemes are being implemented contravenes employment legislation.

David Connolly, director of the Dublin Inner-City Partnership which works with a number of the managing agents for JI schemes, says it's clear the Government "seems prepared to accept this scale of people going back to the live register". When the JI scheme was introduced in 1996, he says, "we understood that these would be real jobs that would be sustainable". Referring to 73 JI lay-offs implemented in Ballymun, Coolock and Darndale, Dublin, in the past fortnight "under intense pressure from FÁS", Connolly says about half the workers were aged over 50, "whose prospects for getting work aren't great".

He is critical that FÁS has instructed managers to shed participants who have been on the scheme five years or longer. "We would challenge it on the grounds that the usual way of implementing redundancies is last in first out. This turns that on its head and we would question the legality of that."

He is calling on the Government to halt cuts in the JI scheme. "We are hoping the Government will reverse the decisions on the current cuts and retain all of the existing JI jobs for another three years, to the end of 2006. This would allow us to obtain funding to mainstream [make the positions permanent] and maintain the services."

Throughout the country there are further concerns that CE participants working in health-related jobs aren't being replaced. CE places in health have not been made permanent, as promised and The Irish Wheelchair Association (IWA) says this is leading to "massive gaps" in service provision.

The association has seen the number of CE workers at its 46 Disability Resource Centres drop from 390 last year to 194 this year. Because of the three-year cap on CE scheme participation, the association says skilled workers are being forced back on to the live register, and they find it extremely difficult to replace them.

Mary Nolan (39), who works as a cook and care assistant at the IWA Springfield Resource Centre in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, is near the end of her placement and is due to lose her job on December 5th. Separated, with two young children, she previously had no income other than the lone parent allowance.

"I've been there 14 months and I do everything from the cooking, for 30 people with special nutritional needs, to the feeding and driving. I love the work and I've learnt so much, done all these courses. I realise it's the job I really want, and I'm needed there." She has looked for work elsewhere, but doesn't think she'll get anything in the field she's grown to love. "It's like a door was opened to me and now it's being closed. It just seems such a waste."

Michael McCormack (44), of Edenderry, Co Offaly is in a similar situation. He has cerebral palsy and his CE post at the Springfield Centre as office assistant was the first job he ever had. He will lose it on December 5th. "I think it will be very hard to get a job," he says.

Hugh Farrell, the IWA's regional manager in the midlands, predicts "enormous problems" replacing these workers. Liam Treacy, director of community services with FÁS, also acknowledges problems. "We are trying to work with the communities to get the least hurtful solutions." He says he and his team at FÁS "obviously miss the places [on the schemes]. But at the end of the day it's a political decision."

The Minister, Frank Fahey told The Irish Times last week he was "cognisant of the pain" the cuts in CE and JI were causing and he had brought proposals to Cabinet on revampingthe CE scheme. Numbers would not fall below 20,000, he promised. Asked whether there were plans to eliminate the JI scheme, a Department of Enterprise spokesman said: "All options are under review".