Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 9 May 2024

I have had this matter selected as a Topical Issue on four separate occasions. Each time, I called for a comprehensive, Cabinet-led approach to the issues of violence in our city centre, which too often has plagued and blighted the place that I love and that I walk through every day. We have had some satisfaction in that regard. The Taoiseach has announced that he intends to construct a task force to address issues of antisocial behaviour in Dublin. Today, I come before the Chamber seeking to understand the nature and make up of that task force. I would like to understand the manner in which it will be formatted. There was an announcement today regarding the chair and some other members. I was also conscious, as the Taoiseach announced certain constructive parts of the task force to address safety in the city of Dublin, that at that same time a scenario was taking place on the Grand Canal. Hoardings and fences were being constructed, horrendous in terms of their aesthetic and the image we would like to present as the image of the city. I understand the desire for those two things to be seen as separate, but I do not believe they are. This city will be safe when this city feels safe and is safe for everybody. I would like to understand from the Minister of State the exact make up of this task force.

Who will be on it? My understanding is that there will be representatives from Dublin City Council, An Garda Síochána and Transport for Ireland. That makes complete and utter sense. For example, will the HSE also be present? One of the issues we have seen for decades in Dublin city centre is people in chronic states of drug addiction who are very vulnerable. How does the Taoiseach intend to cater for that need? Will the task force look at detox beds to allow people to recover from substance misuse? Will the task force come back with recommendations to all of us which are basic when it comes to Dublin city centre? How many more gardaí will be on the streets? We should not have to wait 12 weeks to understand that. What is the budget? How many more gardaí will there be and will they be municipal gardaí or will gardaí taken from other parts of the country be policing the streets on overtime? If that is the case, we have seen it before and it does not work. The streets cannot be policed on overtime.

Will engagement happen, not only with the business community, which should absolutely be consulted? Remembering that the city centre is also a place where people live, how will that be factored into the Taoiseach's task force? What will be the engagement? I would like to understand how the task force will differ in its make-up from any of the other initiatives that have been announced in terms of safety in the city centre in the past five or six years.

I did a little research before I came in today. Only last August we had the safer communities initiative that was launched to great fanfare by the Minister, Deputy McEntee. Will there be an overlap? What will be the consultation with groups such as the LGBTQI community, members of which have expressed fears about the rise in hate crime? Will the Irish Refugee Council be part of the task force? In 12 weeks, what will be the difference? I would like to be constructive. I have been asking for this for a long time. I would have liked to have seen more engagement before announcements were made. There are fine representatives of the north and south inner city, representatives on councils, who were not consulted. A public relations video was put out by Fine Gael on Saturday which included the Taoiseach, an MEP candidate and local councillors. That is fine, but imagine being someone who has worked and lived in the city and has not felt consulted in the same way the Taoiseach's party did. I am looking forward to the Minister of State's response.

On behalf of the Minister for Justice, I thank Deputy Gannon for raising this matter today. Dublin city and its surroundings are a hive of business and tourism, particularly at this time of year. Equally, there is a strong community created by local residents. We want the city to be a safe place for people to live in, work in and visit.

The Deputy will be aware that today the Taoiseach announced the creation of a task force for Dublin city centre. The goal of the task force is to make Dublin city centre a more thriving, attractive and safer cityscape and a desirable location to live in, work in, do business and visit. The high-level task force, taking an evidence-based approach to its work, will make clear and concrete recommendations on improving the city centre's public realm safety and experience within a 12 week timeframe. This will draw on current plans and submissions and will complement work already under way in the Dublin city co-ordination office. It will also take full account of existing initiatives such as Dublin's North-East inner city initiative and the Dublin north inner city local community safety partnership. David McRedmond, the chief executive of An Post, has agreed to serve as independent chair of the task force. The overall membership will be a maximum of 12 people, to include the public service including An Garda Síochána, local authority representatives and the National Transport Authority, business and trade union representatives, community and service provider representatives and cultural and arts providers.

Community safety is not solely the responsibility of the Department of Justice or An Garda Síochána, rather it is a whole-of-government responsibility. The Government is committed to taking action to tackle crime across the country. This action includes giving An Garda Síochána the tools and technology to fight crime in a digital era by rolling out improved CCTV and body-worn cameras, doubling the maximum sentence for assault causing harm to ten years, giving local people and local representatives a real say in how to make their communities safer through new community safety partnerships, and enacting the Garda powers Bill that is currently being drafted to modernise and update the powers available to An Garda Síochána.

An Garda Síochána maintains a proactive approach to policing the city centre in order to reduce crime and keep people safe. A number of important Garda operations are in place in Dublin city centre and the wider Dublin metropolitan region. For example, Operation Citizen which commenced in October 2021 is delivering an enhanced high-visibility policing presence in the city centre on a daily basis. Members of the Garda mounted unit, the Garda dog unit, the armed support unit and the Dublin metropolitan regional roads policing unit support Operation Citizen by way of high-visibility beats and mobile patrols, especially at weekends and in support of organised events. The Garda national public order unit is also available to support regular units and has recently been issued with larger capacity incapacitant spray and smaller public order shields. In addition, Operation Limmat under the Dublin metropolitan region's crime reduction strategy provides a pro-arrest and early investigation approach to incidents of assault, together with driving high-visibility policing in public places to act as a deterrent to prevent and reduce assaults and public order offences in the region. The Garda authority has also launched Operation Saul which has the aim of providing a safe environment for commuters using public transport services in the Dublin metropolitan region.

I want to be clear that incidents of assault, intimidation or violence in our capital city are completely unacceptable and can never become the norm. The Government is committed to ensuring An Garda Síochána has the resources it needs to combat and prevent crime and to keep us safe.

No one for a second believes that incidents of crime and assault should ever become the norm. The frustration on everyone else's part is that they have become the norm. The announcement of a task force only matters if in 12 weeks' time, or preferably tomorrow, when someone is being attacked on the street, there will be a garda who will be able to intervene quickly. Those are the brass tacks of it. Regardless of the operation - the Minister of State mentioned Operation Citizen and there have been any number of operations before that - the streets cannot be policed with crisis management.

Every single week without fail a video is sent to me by one of the business operators in the city centre either of open drug dealing or the stealing of bikes and inevitably there is an absence of any Garda response. I have no criticism of the gardaí who are there, but there are never enough. That is a failure and reflection of the State. Will the task force take that into consideration? Will the set number of gardaí be increased for the city centre? If not, what is the purpose of this task force?

I welcome the number of groups that will be around the table, but it will not matter unless the HSE is there with fully resourced detoxification beds to help people out of chronic addiction. Will we have, for example, the much talked about safe injection facility? That has been held up in politics and has not opened. That would make a difference. This task force will only matter if two things happen. Chronic open drug dealing is no longer tolerated and when people experience crime a garda will be present. What I am really fearful of is what inevitably happens when we have public attention on an incident. Crime gets pushed into the residential areas of Dorset Street or wherever beyond for a period. Then a residents' group emerges and it is pushed back into the city centre. We have had that cycle for the best part of four decades now.

Dublin needs Cabinet authority. In the absence of strong local government that is empowered, we need the Cabinet to take an interest in it. I will be vociferous in holding the Government's feet to the fire in terms of an interest in Dublin. Dublin has to be more than a public relations exercise. I fear that is what this task force will turn into.

The Deputy will be aware that the new approach to community safety policing via local community safety partnerships is being piloted in three locations, including the north inner city of Dublin. This approach brings together local communities and local service providers under an independent chair to develop a community safety plan for their local area, and more important, to work in partnership with their local area. The Dublin North Inner City Partnership continues to work collaboratively with key stakeholder agencies to address matters as they arise. It has four proactive subgroups and they are focused on specific themes that have an impact on the community. The Department of Justice's community safety innovation fund reinvests funds seized as the proceeds of crime back into communities. This fund increased from €2 million in 2022 to €3 million last year. The Minister for Justice was delighted to see it increase again to €3.75 million in budget 2024. Some 22 successful projects received funding in 2022 and another 30 projects last year.

One of these successful projects is the community safety wardens scheme in Wolfe Tone Park which was provided funding of €150,000 aimed at providing support for a social space for recreation in Wolfe Tone Park and serving the surrounding areas. It also aims to provide a visible presence in the community and reassure elderly and vulnerable members of the community. The right approach to solving problems is to have a multi-agency approach, bring in communities, provide additional funding, bring high-level support from Ministers and politicians and focus attention on problems. It is more than PR. It is a definite attempt to solve the problem.

As I mentioned earlier in the Chamber, plans have been announced to repurpose the new community care nursing unit in Nenagh. The decision to change it from a public facility to a privately run stepdown facility, in order to take pressure off UHL, is a prime example of robbing Peter to pay Paul and moving the deckchairs around. Again, it is the elderly in the area who will suffer. It appears the Minister believes it is appropriate to deal with a shortage of beds in the mid-west by transferring that shortage elsewhere in the same region. It will be at a cost to the elderly. It is an unacceptable way of running any health service, as anybody with any bit of common sense would agree.

More than 20 people currently reside in the existing St. Conlon's facility, which has been declared not fit for purpose by HIQA. People have very little space in their rooms. I will give an example. As things stand at St. Conlon's, if someone has to use a hoist furniture has to be moved out of the way. Visitors have to sit on the bed. That is how small the units are at the minute. The floors are rising which is unacceptable in a facility that houses elderly people. My God, surely that should not be happening in 2024.

HIQA previously reported the need for a new nursing home and that is what St. Conlon's was getting. News of the new nursing home was received with great joy by the families and residents because they had been waiting for more than a decade for this. Since its inception and throughout the build, those residing or working there alongside the unions engaged with the HSE, to a certain extent. Some 20 residents are ready to move in. A further 40 people are on the waiting list for the new St. Conlon's facility. They are waiting to get in there at some stage. Their hope and optimism for the future has been snatched from under their noses by the announcement I mentioned at the outset. It has been done with no meaningful engagement.

The HSE and the Department are trying to give the impression that there has been widespread engagement with the unions, the residents and the workers, but that has not happened. Nothing could be further from the truth. This misconception has outraged the residents and the unions. The public is not happy either because of the way this is being pushed on them. The Taoiseach said in the House that there should be engagement at local level between the HSE, families, staff, residents and local representatives. We have had no engagement with anybody from the Department on this. I spoke to a union representative who told me that the HSE engaged with him at the start but after that, it cancelled meetings on numerous occasions and all of that engagement stopped. There has been no engagement worth talking about. It is another example of the elderly being expected to shoulder the burden of a health system that appears to put them last while it struggles with the consequences of the reconfiguration in the mid-west.

Where will the people who would be accommodated in this 50-bed unit go? This is a disastrous decision. It just shifts the problem from UHL to elderly people who happen to live in the mid-west. The existing St. Conlon's facility takes pressure off UHL, as would the new unit. This decision only shifts the deckchairs. There is justifiable fear that if the keys are handed over to a privately run company, as has been suggested, those keys will never come back. We have seen that in numerous places such as Carrick-on-Suir and the Dean Maxwell community nursing unit, both of which are in my own county of Tipperary. This is a replica of that as far as I am concerned. That is why a rally is being held in Nenagh this weekend. There will be a massive crowd at it. Can the Minister of State with responsibility for older people stand over the decision that has been made here?

There are two sides to the coin here. When one is in government, sometimes difficult decisions have to be made for the greater good. This was not a decision that was arrived at lightly. We have two situations. On the one hand, the Government has committed to improving access to acute services across the mid-west region. This includes significant and sustained investment in a range of measures to increase capacity at University Hospital Limerick and reduce unnecessary admissions. On many occasions over the last four years, the Deputy has lambasted the Government about the situation in Limerick, and rightly so, because too many people are waiting on trolleys in Limerick and a solution has to be found. On the other hand, we have the long-term continuum of care. I do not think you will get any better advocate for older persons than myself. I am standing up here this evening. I deliberately stayed to answer this question.

I am very conscious of the importance of strengthening the capacity and resilience of our public health system through the delivery of health and social care infrastructure. This investment includes the community nursing unit programme, which was launched in 2016 to ensure that up to 90 of our public community nursing units, CNUs, and community hospitals would be refurbished or replaced to ensure the best quality environments for our older people. A significant investment of €20.2 million has been allocated to the new CNU, in Nenagh under the CNU programme. Older person's services in the north Tipperary area will be enhanced by the opening of a new state-of-the-art 50-bed CNU in Nenagh, replacing the St. Conlon's CNU. It will have a complement of 50 beds providing long-stay care, respite care and palliative care services. The CNU will provide a high-quality living environment in line with all regulatory requirements.

I have to correct the Deputy on one point. St. Conlon's as it currently stands is registered with HIQA. The Deputy gave the impression that it is not. It is currently registered with HIQA for the current 20 residents who are there.

In order to alleviate the significant pressures at UHL, a decision has been made to utilise the new Nenagh CNU building on an interim basis as a stepdown sub-acute and rehabilitation facility for UHL. It will be run by a private provider with expertise in such services. A procurement process is under way. A new 96-bed unit is being built in Limerick at the moment, which will mean 70 new, additional beds. While that is being built, in the short term a decision has been made to use the new CNU, which is currently lying empty because it would take 100 staff to staff it. There are only 31 staff in St. Conlon's who can move with it. In the short term, while that premises is empty a decision has been made to utilise it to support 50 beds in order to support the emergency department in Limerick. I have been given a guarantee that 12 months after the contract commences with the private provider, this will be reviewed. As soon as the new 96-bed unit in Limerick opens its doors, the new facility in Nenagh will revert back to the CNU. Recruitment will commence this year to provide the additional staff for the new 50-bed facility, which has en suite rooms. It will need 100 staff members for safe staffing. There are currently 31 staff in St. Conlon's so even if they moved, they would not be able to facilitate the full unit at the moment. This is a short-term measure for the greater good. The Deputy spoke about older people in the area. Many of those older people who could potentially be on a trolley in Limerick will now be diverted to the CNU in Nenagh. They will be able to get the nursing care they need and avoid the emergency department.

On the Minister of State's last point, 50 patients will come from UHL to the new unit. Twenty patients in the existing St. Conlon's facility are waiting to move into the kind of facility that the Minister of State is talking about. They will be left in the old St. Conlon's. I did not give the impression that HIQA turned down St. Conlon's. All I said was that HIQA had previously reported the need for a new nursing home in the area. The 96-bed unit mentioned by the Minister of State needs to be supplied. She spoke about the short term, 12 months and 18 months. In the case of St. Brigid's, we were told it would be 12 months. It is now four or five years down the line and it is never coming back. Four years ago, we were told there were plans in place for the Dean Maxwell facility, but there are not. The fear in Nenagh is that this is what will happen to St. Conlon's. That is the big worry. We have lambasted the Government and it was well deserved because of the conditions at UHL, but it needs to sort out the crisis there by carrying out the emergency care capacity review, providing the 96 beds that are needed and staffing them accordingly. If it could lift the embargo in the first place, that would help. As I said earlier, it does not make sense to start taking patients from UHL out to St. Conlon's. It is shifting the deckchairs. There is no common sense involved here. That unit that has been rejected by HIQA.

I accept that "rejected" is probably the wrong word.

They have been told the unit is not fit-for-purpose anymore. I do not want my parents or other people having to walk on unsafe floorboards in a nursing home. I want them to have toilets in their room and visitors not having to sit on beds. If hoists have to be used for elderly people, I do not want lockers and so on to have to be moved out of people's way. It is nonsensical that a purpose-built unit for 20 patients and others on the waiting list has been taken away.

As I said, sometimes difficult decisions have to be taken for the greater good. The decision to utilise the new Nenagh community nursing unit building, on an interim basis, as a step-down, sub-acute and rehabilitation facility was taken to alleviate the significant pressures on University Hospital Limerick. The intention is that the arrangement will be reviewed within one year - I have been given a guarantee of that - and the Nenagh community nursing unit will open for long-term residential care services 12 months after the contract with the private provider commences.

I do not want people to have the impression that older people in St. Conlon's are not being looked after The current community nursing unit at St. Conlon’s in Nenagh will continue to provide the same excellent care to its residents during this interim period. The new Nenagh community nursing unit will ultimately replace St. Conlon’s community nursing unit.

The regional executive officer, Ms Sandra Broderick, and HSE mid-west chief officer, Ms Maria Bridgeman, together with Ms Colette Cowan, UHL, are committed to ongoing engagement with the unions in regard to the temporary use of the Nenagh community nursing unit as a step-down unit and have met union representatives on three occasions, with a further meeting scheduled for 13 May.

There is also ongoing engagement between the director of nursing in St. Conlon’s community nursing unit and residents and their families to address informal queries that have arisen regarding the temporary postponement of the move to the new Nenagh community nursing unit. The community nursing unit is being repurposed temporarily for 12 months and I guarantee the Deputy that the keys will be handed back.

An older person with a urinary tract or kidney infection who needs intravenous drugs and fluids can be brought to the community nursing unit and avoid the emergency department in Limerick. Please God, they will be back home with their loved ones within 48 to 72 hours. It is not a decision that was taken lightly, but it was taken for the greater good to try to support the emergency department in Limerick. I will give the Deputy a guarantee on the floor of the House that I have been given a firm commitment that as soon as the 96-bed unit in Limerick opens, which will provide 71 additional beds, families and their loved ones will be able to move from St. Conlon's into the new unit when it is staffed.

I am delighted that this Topical Issue was selected and thank the Office of the Ceann Comhairle for facilitating this important discussion. It is an issue I am very passionate about and I hope to shed a bit of light on what the medical cannabis access programme, MCAP, and the ministerial licence mean.

As we all know, the MCAP was established in 2019 as a five-year pilot scheme. However, the programme has shown limited reach. Data released to me shows that in the first quarter this year, a mere 53 patients have managed to secure access. Alarmingly, there were zero enrollees for the first three months of this year. I believe since March, a further two, or possibly four, have managed to enrol, but for a programme that was intended to ensure accessibility for patients, I am sure the Minister of State will agree the numbers are stark.

In contrast, the ministerial licence, also established in 2019 as an alternative means of obtaining medical cannabis, has witnessed a markedly higher uptake of 319 accepted applications, with one accepted in the first quarter of this year. This shows that there is a much greater need and demand for what the MCAP currently allows and the programme must be expanded immediately. The ministerial licence has its complexities. The HSE stated it commits to reimburse patients for cannabis products obtained via this route, but that is only if prescribed for one of the three qualifying medical conditions recognised by the programme. That is a bit of a contradiction in itself that I will refer to later in my contribution. It is imperative that I outline the three conditions. They are spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis, MS, intractable nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy and severe refractory epilepsy. I will focus on these three conditions.

Access for patients with spasticity, but not patients with MS more generally, seems very specific. I know of patients with MS who have relayed huge frustrations to me about this. Intractable nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, but not cancer patients, is covered by the scheme. Again, that is very specific and restrictive. That the definition of the final condition includes the word "severe" seems unnecessary, as refractory epilepsy already implies that medicines have not worked or do not work at all to control seizures.

Whether the Government intended to do so, it ensured access for only those three specific conditions. We were all optimistic when the programme was first announced. However, five years on it is disappointing that the numbers show just how restrictive it is. It is concerning as all of those patients who access the ministerial licence are doing so because they are not eligible for the MCAP pathway and are excluded from applying.

The absence of an eligibility criteria for the ministerial licence reflects a broader demand and necessity that exceeds the MCAP provisions. There is a pressing need for the expansion of the scheme, underscored by the higher patient numbers utilising the ministerial licence. That indicates that the current MCAP is overly restrictive.

Patients accessing the ministerial licence worked tirelessly with their medical professionals to complete what is called the ministerial licence. There are issues with the scheme, however, and the main one I want to point to is the fact that patients get no financial assistance. Medical cannabis is by no means cheap for patients who are trying to obtain treatment. The numbers speak for themselves. In light of these findings, these numbers are not just statistics but rather a testament to the urgent need for reform and the voices of patients calling for change.

I thank the Deputy for her question. She raised two distinct issues, which I shall address in order. The MCAP is operated by the primary care reimbursement service of the HSE and is a statutory programme to enable clinicians and patients to access prescribed cannabis-based products for the treatment of three conditions as specified in the HPRA 2017 report Cannabis for Medical Use-A Scientific Review, commissioned by the Minister for Health. As the Deputy stated, the three conditions are: spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis resistant to all standard therapies and interventions while under expert medical supervision; intractable nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, despite the use of standard anti-emetic regimes while under expert medical supervision; and severe refractory treatment-resistant epilepsy that has failed to respond to standard anticonvulsant medications while under expert medical supervision.

The Misuse of Drugs (Prescription and Control of Supply of Cannabis for Medical Use) Regulations 2019 set out the legal provisions for the operation of the MCAP and the legal obligations for healthcare professionals and commercial operators. The MCAP commenced in late 2021 and, as the Deputy said, to date 55 patients have been treated under it. The MCAP was scheduled to be a five-year pilot programme. However, the Minister for Health brought the review forward, given the passage of time, and the Health Research Board was engaged to carry out the initial evidence gathering and subsequent synthesis for presentation to a clinical review group that will make recommendations to the Minister as to whether evidence exists to expand the range of products covered by the programme. Officials in the Department of Health are working on setting up the clinical review group.

On ministerial licence patients, the ministerial licence programme enables clinicians with a licence issued pursuant to section 14 of the Misuse of Drugs Act to treat patients with cannabis products. The programme predates the MCAP, the first licence being issued in late 2016. To date, 362 ministerial licences have been issued for the treatment of 77 separate patients.

Currently 27 patients are availing of the programme. All patients currently avail of cannabis-based products manufactured by a pharmacy in the Netherlands. Having initially been set up by the Department of Health during the pandemic, the primary care reimbursement service, PCRS, of the HSE operates a monthly service whereby the products are collected from the Netherlands, transported to Ireland and delivered to patients' homes directly. This applies to all patients. For those patients treated under the licence programme for one of the three stated conditions covered by the MCAP, the PCRS directly pays the dispensing pharmacy in the Netherlands on receipt of an invoice. Patients treated for other conditions must meet the costs of the products themselves.

I thank the Minister of State for the new statistics showing that 362 licences have been issued, which is very positive. Recently a patient reached out to me who had applied for a ministerial licence. The Minister for Health will be very familiar with this case because I submitted a number of parliamentary questions on the matter. What has come to light is that because the consultant is the one who completes a ministerial licence application, he or she is then deemed to be the applicant, which means that the Department will only engage with the consultant. In this particular case, the application was submitted on 7 December 2023, more than five months ago. In response to a parliamentary question, I was told that the Department would expect the consultant to hear back within a matter of days so something has gone seriously wrong here. The consultant has had to submit a complaint to try to ascertain what is going on. The patient is seen as a third party and cannot access any information whatsoever. I just wanted to highlight that again on the floor of the Dáil. Hopefully, I will get an answer for that patient.

I also want to point to recent HRB research where the board reviewed existing medical cannabis research and found evidence to support the prescribing of cannabis for the conditions that are approved, which is fantastic. The research also found evidence to support its use for nerve pain, especially in those with multiple sclerosis, diabetes and spinal cord injuries. That is very positive news and I applaud the HRB for bringing this to light. However, this report is at odds with a study by the board in 2016, which also found evidence that medicinal cannabis in some forms has at least moderate efficacy in treating sleep disorders and stimulating appetite, chemotherapy as a whole, fibromyalgia, PTSD and some Parkinson's diseases. There is also evidence for its usefulness in the treatment of dementia and a list of other conditions that I do not have time to go into now. I hope the review under way will take account of the number of different conditions that have been approved under ministerial licence and the recent research that has been conducted in the area.

As I stated earlier, the Department is currently establishing a clinical review group to review the publication to make recommendations to the Minister for Health. In response to an oral parliamentary question last week, he stated that he would be open to any expansion, if recommended, but that he would be entirely led by the clinicians in the group.

The Deputy spoke about a specific case in the context of the ministerial licence. To ascertain which patients are eligible to have their products funded, the PCRS would review whether the person met the clinical criteria and if so, advise that the patient could be supported for reimbursement. In situations where the HSE considered reimbursement support appropriate for patients accessing cannabis product from the Netherlands, a number of steps were taken. First, the patient’s consultant was satisfied that all therapeutic options were exhausted and was prepared to accept the responsibility of monitoring the patient’s response to the cannabis product. A prescriber, namely the person authorising the supply for a patient to a person entitled to dispense, applied to the Minister for a ministerial licence and a copy of the licence was enclosed with the application. The consultant completed an individual reimbursement form such that the therapeutic benefit for the patient is described. Only applications that were in line with the clinical guidance on cannabis for medical use that is published on the Department of Health website were considered. The three indications set out in the guidelines are: spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis; intractable nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy; and severe, refractory epilepsy. Anything outside of these indications is not supported for reimbursement.

If the Wynne sends on the details of the particular case she mentioned to the Minister's office, I am sure his officials will look at it for her.

I appreciate the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, standing in for the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Humphreys, who is unavoidably absent this evening but I ask that the senior Minister would respond to me directly in the fullness of time on the important points I will raise. She, like the Minister of State, is passionate about rural Ireland and appreciates more than most the huge voluntary and community ethos that underpins our rural communities.

I am concerned by a series of unnecessary burdens on the community employment, CE, structure, that are deeply worrying and that are threatening the viability and continuation of many of these schemes. Following two major leaks of sensitive information, the Department of Social Protection quite rightly rolled out a new web portal called Welfare Partners for CE schemes in 2017. This was to enable both sponsors and supervisors of CE schemes to transact information swiftly and securely with the Department. The system uses the same means of State-backed authentication that allows select users to submit information using their advanced electronic signatures to both the Revenue Commissioners and the Companies Registration Office without the need for paper.

Up until 29 April this year, the system cleverly allowed supervisors to prepare and upload reports but subsequently required sponsors to log in and review the data before submitting, in a two-tier process, to the Department. I understand there was an initial transition period and supervisors were advised that change was coming in November last year. Supervisors flagged concerns and reservations but, alas, all fell on deaf ears. Now we have a truly laughable and Killinaskully-esque situation. It is now mandatory for all CE schemes to use the online secure portal, which is fair enough. However, supervisors are still required to hand-carry paper documents, solicit handwritten signatures from sponsors and rescan them. Then the scheme supervisors have to log in and electronically sign the same documents again. It makes absolutely no sense for the Department to decline an electronic signature, which has strong means of authentication, and accept a scan of a handwritten signature that may not have authenticity. This unnecessary situation is particularly burdensome for small, rural CE schemes. I was alerted to this by local councillor, Mick Cahill, who works closely with the Carrickedmond and Legan CE scheme, chaired by Philip Butler. That scheme is extremely fortunate to have a conscientious and dedicated supervisor in Stephen Kelly.

On 22 April, the Department directed that sponsors rather than scheme supervisors, as had been the case heretofore, were required to upload all supporting documentation for payroll with effect from 29 April. This alteration is a clear and further dismantling of the existing two-tiered process employed in the Welfare Partners portal and an unnecessary transfer of an office administration duty from the supervisor to the voluntary sponsor. What started out as a very good idea has been hijacked. The new system runs contrary to the Department's own policies on community employment corporate governance processes which were issued to CE schemes in 2019.

Why did the Department abruptly and unilaterally implement changes that transfer duties from a Government-funded agency to a local volunteer? Why is the Department refusing to engage with supervisors and CE schemes on this important matter?

I thank the Deputy for his questions. I listened carefully to the points he made. I will now read the formal response from the Minister for Social Protection before discussing the matter further.

It is important to acknowledge the excellent work that is done on the full range of work schemes, including community employment, Tús, the rural social scheme, RSS and the job initiative scheme, supported by the Department of Social Protection and the contribution that these schemes and their workers make to communities across the country. Work schemes such as CE are positive initiatives that enable the long-term unemployed to make a contribution to their communities while upskilling themselves for prospective future employment. At present, more than 20,000 places are available on CE schemes with a budget in excess of €350 million available to support them in 2024.

The Department of Social Protection funds CE, which is delivered by independent sponsor organisations.

In their role as funders of community employment schemes, Department officials have ongoing engagement with community employment supervisors and their union representatives to discuss operational issues and other matters of common concern. The Department is committed to modernising its service delivery and developing digital systems to support its functions.

Responsibility for community employment schemes transferred from FÁS to the then Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection in January 2012. The programme continued to be delivered on a legacy IT platform until 2017, when it was integrated onto the Department's IT infrastructure. As part of that implementation, a new digital service, welfare partners, was developed for organisations that engage with the Department, with a specific focus on providing an online digital service to community employment sponsors and other business partners. The welfare partners portal has been designed to be fully accessible, secure and responsive. It uses the Revenue online service, ROS, digital certificate for authentication and non-repudiation. Using the ROS digital certificate infrastructure on the welfare partners platform allows the Department to leverage the current ROS infrastructure, which is well established across the business community. Community employment was the first business service of the Department to use the welfare partners portal.

Since the service was launched in 2017, community employment sponsors have been able to complete individual learning plans, ILPs, for participants to submit wage, material and training budget claims and engage with the Department online. In this way, the new portal replaced the historical administrative practices, which were paper based and labour intensive. Over the period from October 2017 to the end of April 2024, community employment sponsors have successfully completed more than 2.3 million transactions on the welfare partners portal.

When the new service was rolled out, all community employment sponsors and supervisors were invited to attend specific information sessions, which were held nationwide, on how to use the welfare partners platform. A dedicated helpdesk was established to provide assistance to any sponsor groups having issues with the portal. In addition, sponsors and supervisors were provided with a welfare partners user manual and further guidance, including a frequently asked questions section, on www.welfare.ie. Each scheme also has a dedicated local departmental officer who is available to help with any further queries. If there are specific issues or difficulties with accessing and using welfare partners, the relevant community employment sponsor should contact the helpdesk or local departmental officer in the first instance.

I appreciate that the Deputy's question is not so much about the welfare partners system generally, which has been running since 2017, as it is about the change that was introduced in April this year. As he has outlined, that change makes the system more cumbersome, with the authentication process now involving a manual step of scanning in a signature. He considers it to be less secure than it was before and that it involves more work and a transfer of responsibility to the voluntary participants in the scheme. His query is specifically about a change that was implemented in the past couple of weeks and is causing a lot of trouble in practice. I am happy to hear any more he might have to say about it.

I thank the Minister of State. I welcome the official response but he really cut to the chase in his closing comments. I have no issue with the welfare partners portal. Indeed, community employment scheme supervisors recognise it as a top-class piece of kit. The reality, however, is that a serious situation is evolving. There is an eminently sensible situation to the problem, which is that we should not fix what is not broken. The welfare partners portal has worked very well. It does exactly what it says on the tin and exactly what it is intended to do. It allowed the safe and secure sharing of sensitive information under the control of community employment supervisors, so long as supervisors merely had to log on and review the data before making a submission. It worked perfectly well. There is no need to fix what is not broken.

As I said, the Carrickedmond and Legan scheme in County Longford is a very good one. It has 15 participants in a disparate region across south Longford. It engages with nine community groups and covers Legan, Abbeyshrule, Carrickedmond, Barry, Colehill, Carrickboy, Taghshinny and Ballycloghan. I feel like Deputies Danny and Michael Healy-Rae as I am naming all these areas. They are important principalities in their own right across south Longford. The reality is that the life expectancy of this scheme is now threatened, with the funding suspended because the scheme sponsors are not able to engage with the new guidelines. They are simply unworkable. The scheme is going to run out of money in the coming weeks. This is a scheme that helped Abbeyshrule village to become a Tidy Towns national winner a number of years ago. Now the scheme is facing closure. That eventuality can be averted simply by doing exactly what the scheme advises and suggests should be done. What is needed is to continue to do what we did previously, which is allowing the scheme supervisors to manage and administer the welfare partners portal and requiring the scheme sponsors only to log in and approve the documents. That was what was done and what worked successfully for a number of years.

I am aware of Abbeyshrule and the improvements that were made there through the community employment scheme. It is well known around the country. I appreciate the benefits of community employment schemes. I will take the specific issues the Deputy raised to the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, to see whether he has any specific knowledge of them. He may engage directly with the Deputy, or the Deputy might engage with the Minister of State, through his office, to try to make progress on the matter. To date, the system has worked very well. There have been millions of transactions. I am glad the Deputy has taken the opportunity to let me know that a problem has arisen in the past few weeks. I will make the Minister of State fully aware of it and ask him to get back to the Deputy directly.