Young single women with children will lose out if the Tanaiste presses ahead with plans to exclude people under 25 from the community employment scheme, lone parents' groups have warned.
The Scheme Workers' Alliance yesterday opened a campaign to oppose the changes. It will include a rally in Dublin next Monday and a march at the end of the month.
The State-funded scheme provides part-time work for 37,500 long-term unemployed people and lone parents. It enables voluntary organisations and schools to employ more workers than they could otherwise afford.
Its primary purpose is to train participants so as to boost their chances of getting work.
However, the Government has decided to reduce the number of places on the scheme by 5,000 over the next five years.
This is being done in the context of falling unemployment and increased job opportunities and because formal FAS training courses are more likely to result in jobs than the community employment scheme, a spokeswoman for the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, said yesterday.
In addition, 2,700 full-time jobs are to be created and funded in the social economy (made up of services which do not produce a profit but benefit society. It includes much of the work of voluntary and community groups).
But a proposal to raise the minimum age limit for the community employment scheme from 21 to 25 years has been described as an outrage by Treoir, the Federation of Services for Unmarried Parents and their Children.
"There are many lone parents under the age of 25 who greatly benefit from access to the community employment schemes," a statement from Treoir said yesterday.
Gingerbread, which provides services to lone parents, said it had been told it is to lose its community employment scheme and that the resulting loss of staff "will strike a severe blow to Gingerbread's ability to serve the isolated and disadvantaged in our society".
Mr Michael O'Reilly, regional secretary with the ATGWU, said the changes in the scheme represented "a direct and cruel attack on the most vulnerable in our society".
The SWA is to hold a rally of scheme workers in the ATGWU Hall in Dublin on Monday evening. It has also called for a one-day stoppage by scheme workers on the last Friday of the month and a march on Ms Harney's Department the same day.
A Department spokeswoman yesterday said it will be open to individual lone parents under 25 to make a case to FAS to be allowed on to a community employment scheme, and that FAS will have the authority to waive the age limit on an individual basis.