Vol. 500 No. 4
234 Mr. Deasy asked the Minister for Finance if a person (details supplied) in County Waterford who has invested part of his redundancy in private retraining is entitled to some support from the State in view of his tax and PRSI contributions over a long number of years; his views on whether the State should be encouraging people to retrain by giving them a significant incentive; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4250/99]
I presume the Deputy is referring to tax relief for education and training courses.
There are a number of tax reliefs available for training and educational courses. Section 476 of the 1997 Taxes Consolidation Act provides tax relief, at the standard tax rate, for the fees of students studying certain training courses. Training courses must be in information technology and foreign languages of the EU but excluding official languages of the State.
There are also tax reliefs, at the standard tax rate, available for the fees of full-time undergraduate students in private colleges and part-time undergraduate students in private colleges and publicly funded colleges. However, the courses must be of a least two years duration.
As the Deputy will be aware the Government commits a large amount of resources to training each year. CERT, the State Tourism Training Agency, provides professional cookery training from elementary level through to advanced and supervisory level. I understand from CERT that elementary programmes are provided for unemployed persons and are run over a 16 week period. During training participants receive a weekly allowance equivalent to the unemployment payment the person was receiving, books, uniforms, and a travel allowance where appropriate.
