Ms Br?d O'Brien:

In many ways, one could argue that a scheme like community employment or Tús should have facilitated that. Again, they tend to have certain structures in them. Perhaps that young man needed to be able to take that and try it out. At the moment, in the system, we are missing that space for developmental work and for people to get a taste of something to see what would happen if they went and did something. That is definitely a gap within our employment services, without a doubt.

On social enterprise, in our submission we talked about that. In terms of chapter 9, it is an important enterprise. For us, the key to it is, what was called in the old social economy programme, "deficient demand enterprises". They are referenced in the current policy. It many cases, they were enterprises that had got off the ground in areas where there was not a huge amount of resources, perhaps there was a lack of employment and a particular need that needed to be met. The local income was never there to ensure the business would be profitable, so there was always a need for ongoing support. Community-led social enterprises are important. They are an important part of the enterprise structure and need to be recognised as such.

The issue around information dissemination is critical. I refer to the Deputy’s point on the Scottish health system vis-à-visthe Irish public services. We would love to see a wraparound public employment service. We called for that many years ago and have sought it. It has been difficult to get traction on that. It is important, particularly for people who perhaps have more distance from the labour market and a longer journey to make, to be able to try things out. Likewise, within our labour market, there are some older workers who wish to work and ageism is a reality in it. That is the other side of it that we need to address and get right. In addition, we need to address the issues that Dr. O’Connor raised about what people who are working and paying into the pot are getting back out of it. We have concerns around some of the recommendations in the commission’s report as well. That raises questions.

On universal basic income, for us, the big issue is getting adequacy addressed and trying to get the system to acknowledge that it needs to lift people above the poverty line and ensure they can meet a minimum essential standard of living. That is the big thing we want to see pushed. Universal basic income would help with some of the issues around welfare to work, and perhaps welfare and work. The difficulty is, at the moment, I do not think either the political system or, particularly, the official system are fans of it and are willing to support it. That is a big challenge in moving forward on it. The income adequacy piece is the piece I want to see the system properly address. There has been a proposal in various different parts of policy around addressing it in respect of pensions. It has not made huge traction or progress in that. It has been difficult to get them to even consider it for working-age payments. It is absolutely essential that they move forward in that.