Ministers Heather Humphreys and Joe O'Brien have announced reforms to community employment and other schemes aimed at providing long-term unemployed people with work experience in their local communities to help them find jobs.

The three schemes up for reform are the Community Employment, Tús, and Rural Social schemes.

The changes include:

• Removal of the six-year time limit for all participants on the Rural Social Scheme
• Eligibility for Tús extended to persons in receipt of disability payments
• New flexibility to allow CE schemes to recruit eligible candidates directly to 30% of places
• Intreo to increase the number of referrals to CE significantly, with schemes required to offer places to at least 60% of candidates referred.
• A new pilot scheme to extend eligibility to qualified adults to be explored
• Continue to allow schemes to extend individual placements and retain existing participants in cases where no replacement candidate has been selected. This means that local services should not be affected due to an inability to replace participants.

Social protection minister Heather Humphreys said: ““These schemes support a range of vital local services in areas such as childcare, meals on wheels, the maintenance and upkeep of local amenities and other vital work in our communities.

“We now have record employment in Ireland with more than 2.5 million people at work. While this is hugely positive, it does present challenges for local schemes in terms of recruitment which in turn has a knock-on effect on the delivery of important local services in communities.

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“The changes that I am announcing today will extend the eligibility criteria for these schemes and will also provide additional flexibility to local supervisors when it comes to the recruitment and retention of participants.”

Humphreys (pictured) also said that supervisors and assistants employed on the CE schemes would now be offered immediate ex-gratia payments for their work as agreed with their representative trade unions.

“The application process for the ex gratia payment for CE supervisors and assistant supervisors is now open. My department will shortly write to CE supervisors and assistant supervisors who may have an immediate entitlement, inviting them to apply for this payment,” the minister stated

The CE ex gratia payments will benefit c.2,500 people employed by CE schemes at a total cost of around €24m.

On reaching retirement age, eligible CE supervisors and CE assistant supervisors will receive a once-off payment in respect of time employed by CE schemes. Around 700 people who have retired since 2008 will be able to apply for payment from this scheme, straight away.

The payment is subject to a cap of €600 per week for a maximum of two weeks per year. The qualifying period for the payment is from 1 July 2008 to the 31 December 2023.