Is the General Workers’ Union making a profit – directly or indirectly – out of the community work scheme or not? Why was the scheme kept under wraps? Why was this newspaper refused a copy of the contract entered into by the government’s Jobs Plus agency with the union over the operation of the scheme?

Answers to these and so many other questions have so far been unsatisfactory, to say the least. Take, for example, the key issue over profit. When this newspaper calculated the profit that the union’s foundation will be making at €3,000 a year on each person assigned to the scheme, the Education Ministry promptly said the figure was incorrect as it did not include the payment of national insurance contributions and statutory bonuses. Nor was any consideration given to management expenses and overheads.

It held the profit was less than €1,400 on every worker. However, when the GWU was specifically asked to say how much it would make, it said “nil”. It has since transpired that the union’s foundation has a commercial company to run the scheme on its behalf, but the union is again refusing to give details.

According to the contract, the union could stop running the scheme if the number of workers assigned by Jobs Plus to the foundation drops to 300. All indications therefore suggest that a profit will be made out of the running of the scheme, and if this is not the case, either the union or the ministry has a duty to clarify the situation.

The contract, which both the government and the GWU did not wish to make public and which only saw the light of day after this newspaper made a request for it under the Freedom of Information Act, lays down that, as from February 1, 2016, and for the following five years, a new non-profit foundation set up by the GWU will employ and take over the management of some 600 long-term unemployed from the books of Jobs Plus, the former Employment and Training Corporation.

That appears to be clear enough but, since it is the taxpayer that is footing the bill, there are many other matters that ought to be clarified. According to the ministry, the 600 long-term unemployed had formed part of the community work scheme between 2009 and 2015, under which they worked for 30 hours, receiving 75 per cent of the minimum wage without benefiting from leave or sick leave.

Under the new scheme, they are earning the minimum wage and enjoying full employment rights. But were they not, under the previous scheme, also bound to undergo training in skills that would help them find permanent jobs at a rate much higher than the minimum wage?

Has the training of these long-term unemployed been stopped altogether now? If so, for what reason?  Would it not have been wiser, and more useful to the long-term unemployed, if, once the scheme has been farmed out, these are helped to learn a skill? Or are all the workers assigned to the scheme beyond the ability of being trained? Or are they all refusing to be trained?

In any case, should they not at least get the same wage rate as those doing the same work? When all is said and done, it does seem that the government’s aim in launching the new scheme is to strike the workers off the unemployment register so that it will able to boast that it has managed to keep the unemployment figure among the lowest in the European Union.