Mr. Eamon Ryan:

I do not know whether the Government lied through its teeth or actually believed what it said before the election. I think it did believe that it was responsible for all the good things that happened in Irish society and that it single-handedly steered the ship into the blue waters of the Celtic tiger boom. It was not in any way responsible for that boom. Its arrogance blinded it.

The changes that are now occurring with regard to the community employment schemes are occurring on the back of the arrogant contention that all is well, that the Irish economy is booming and that unemployment is a thing of the past. In fact, the Government has steered the ship of State into a storm. Unemployment is rising and we will need the community employment schemes. I have the experience of having been on one and having run one back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many aspects of the boom were born out of some of the schemes that were started at that time.

In my own case, a small community employment scheme took me off the dole, which can be very depressing for anyone on it. I was almost unable to work after a year and a half of not being able to get work, but what saved me was the ability to start in a small way in a community employment scheme and develop a business idea I had. Within that safe nurturing environment, I was able to go back to work, start working for myself, start a business and bring money into the country.

That was replicated in the late 1980s and 1990s. People coming home from abroad joined a F??S scheme or an ANCO scheme, as it was called then, which built up their confidence and allowed them to become enterprising. Those schemes were largely responsible for the new business and enterprise of the late 1990s. Now we have a Government that wants to kill them off.

I do not have a problem with regulating or changing the community employment scheme with regard to someone who is working in a hospital or school in what is, in effect, a full-time position, and which should be recognised as such. I have no problem if the Minister changes the name and says, “That is not really a community employment scheme, that is actually a proper full-time job that should be paid for by the Department of Education and Science or the Department of Health and Children.” However, that is not what is happening. The Minister is cutting into the very heart of the community employment scheme. Not only is she attacking the area I just mentioned, but she is also attacking the areas where there is genuine community benefit and where there is no alternative, where the voluntary sector is at work and where people are getting the chance to develop their skills and the assets of their community.

The Minister tries to put the market price on everything and believes everything has to relate to market analysis and assessment. She sees the community employment scheme as a labour market initiative, but it is not. It is a community development initiative. Not only does it help people grow and become experienced in working again if they have been out of work for a while, but it also brings benefits to communities that no other scheme or facility can deliver. The Minister is blinded by free-market ideology. I agree with the backbencher on the other side of the House who called this Government the most right-wing Government we have seen since the foundation of the State.

I do not think the Government believes in the concept of community. If one kills a sense of community, one actually kills the life-force from which proper enterprise comes. That is what this Minister is doing and we will pay for it as her colleague, the Minister for Finance, drags us into deeper, more dangerous and stormy waters. She should review the cutbacks in the community employment scheme because we will need it more than ever as unemployment rises. We will need it to allow people to refocus, regain their confidence and set up more enterprises from the experience they have gained. The Government should turn back, but I have no sense that this Government listens or wants to review its incredibly strong ideological orthodoxy.