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Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 25 Sep 2013

Vol. 226 No. 4

Pathways to Work Strategy: Statements

I am delighted to have the opportunity to discuss the Department of Social Protection's Pathways to Work strategy. This debate was requested prior to the summer recess. The idea is to provide a pathway back to work, education or training for people who, for the most part through no fault of their own, find themselves without work or find that their business has collapsed and are claiming jobseeker's allowance. The strategy, which was launched last year, was the blueprint for the largest set of reforms that our welfare services have ever experienced. It provided for the establishment of an integrated employment and income support service with an intensified work activation focus. The initial reforms concentrated on how we deliver services to the newly unemployed. The 50-point action plan was published in July this year and it sets out to maintain the momentum developed under the pathways strategy and to build on the progress we have made to date. It also has a particular focus on increasing and intensifying our level of engagement with the long-term unemployed. The best way to prevent long-term unemployment is get people who become unemployed back to work as quickly as possible.

Following years of job losses, I am delighted that there are several welcome signs of progress in the labour market. There was an annual increase of 33,800 in the year to June 2013 in the numbers at work. More than 20,000 went into full-time jobs and approximately 10,000 into part-time jobs. That is a positive development because often at the end of a recession the first sign of recovery in the labour market relates to part-time jobs. In addition, unemployment fell by 22,200 over the same period to 300,700 per the Central Statistics Office, continuing a downward trend that began at the start of 2012. By the end of June, the live register, which includes anybody who receives a jobseeker's payment such as part-time workers and those signing on for credit as jobseekers, had fallen to 415,300, from a peak of 466,000 in 2010. The unemployment rate, at 13.4%, is down from a peak of 15.1% in early 2012. When the banks and the construction sector crashed, the country fell off an employment cliff. We lost 250,000 jobs between 2008 and 2010 and this was one of the largest reductions in employment in any country. There are 21,000 fewer people on the live register this week than this time last year, which is a positive sign.

Despite these tentative signs of improvement, unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment, remains unacceptably high. As a society we should move towards an economic goal of full employment, which would mean the unemployment rate falling below 7% and then to 5% and under. Unemployment is also relatively concentrated in households where no adults are working. More than one fifth of the population under 60 years of age lives in such jobless households. Amazingly, the percentage of jobless households increased during the economic boom, indicating a structural problem that was never addressed. It may well be that during the boom, people were parked and almost seen as unemployable or were transferred to other payments such as disability and illness benefit and did not recommence employment. The major concern is that children in jobless households tend to have weaker outcomes than those in households where some or all the adults have significant work. As a society, it is something we must worry about. We need to ensure economic recovery does not leave behind people who are long-term unemployed and in jobless households.

Pathways to Work 2013 builds on the significant progress we made in implementing the reforms and delivering on the targets in Pathways to Work 2012. More than 20,000 people who were long-term unemployed at the start of 2012 have found employment. Approximately 700 staff in FÁS employment services and 1,000 staff in the community welfare service along with 300 other staff working on community employment and other schemes were transferred into the Department of Social Protection on time and within budget. The roll-out of the new Intreo model of operation integrating the relevant employment and payment services commenced in Sligo in October 2012.

A total of 12 Intreo offices have been opened to date and the OPW, which is our agent for the delivery of these offices, has promised that there will be a significant pick up in the conversion of offices. When clients visit an Intreo office, they first receive a public services card which has a biometric photograph, and they provide an electronic signature. The capacity for fraud, for example, where a claimant tries to claim in multiple offices is significantly reduced. We have, therefore, a solid proof of identity. When clients sign in, they are asked to sign a contract with the Department which outlines the service we will provide. We will treat them with dignity and respect and provide income support paid for by our taxpayers and, in return, they are expected to do everything we require to make them work ready. People sign that contract and it is discussed with them. They then attend a group engagement where we tell them about their services. We also profile the individual. We consider their educational attainment because we can predict how quickly they are likely to find a job. The higher the level of educational attainment, the faster they return to employment. They have to sign the social contract of rights and responsibilities. If people decide not to respond to that social obligation that they have to other citizens and taxpayers, we impose penalties. For example, we can reduce their social welfare payments.

If they fail to respond at all, we can suspend their payments for up to nine weeks.

The national internship scheme, JobBridge, was rolled out and is delivering a clear pathway to employment for many people, particularly in the 24 to 37 year old cohort. Over 20,000 people have participated in this scheme. Indecon’s review of the scheme indicated there is a progression rate to employment of over 60%. The feedback to me personally, particularly from small employers, is very positive. They have been strongly impressed by the quality and calibre of the people in the scheme. There is also positive feedback from interns on the experience they got on the scheme. Many of them were in college at the height of the boom but when they came out of college during the downturn they hit a brick wall getting employment opportunities.

The MOMENTUM programme, a collaboration between the Department and the Department of Education and Skills, which aims to provide work-focused training to long-term unemployed people was developed and is operated by providers from the public and private sector. More than 4,000 people are now benefiting from this innovative programme. For example, people can avail of digital skills courses. I am hoping we will be able to continue this programme next year.

The number of places available on activation schemes such as community employment, Tús and JobBridge was increased by 10,000 as part of budget 2013. Tús started in July 2011 and now has 7,000 people on it. We have had tremendous co-operation in developing this from the local development networks across the country.

The Springboard programme has supported more than 10,000 unemployed people to re-skill for emerging employment opportunities. Pathways to Work 2013 seeks to maintain the momentum in the implementation of the original Pathways reforms, while introducing an increased focus on the long-term unemployed, in particular among those who became unemployed in the height of the crisis between 2008 and 2011. Many of these people are male who were employed in the construction industry. They worked with great energy, up at 7 o’clock in the morning and finishing at 10 o’clock at night. Many of them had to change employment fields completely.

Focusing on long-term unemployment, we will be profiling all clients on the live register, not just new claimants. This means there are 420,000 people to be profiled. We will be looking at their education, work experience, where they worked and what they earned. This will be a good predictor as to whether the person will find it easy or difficult to get another job. There will be 10,000 additional places on employment programmes this year, mainly for the long-term unemployed. We will be reserving 40% of training places for the long-term unemployed and reviewing the possible further contribution of the further education sector to this area.

We will ensure that work pays through reforms to housing support under the new housing assistance payment, as well as through continuing simplification and promotion of the in-work payments under the family income supplement in FIS. We have cleared the backlog of applications in this area. The Department pays just under €250 million in FIS to support people going back to work in low-paid work. In some cases they have too few work hours; in others, they may be on a low wage. We will be implementing the JobsPlus incentive for employers to recruit people who are long-term unemployed. Under this programme, if an employer takes someone on who was unemployed for more than one year, they get a cash payment of €300 per month for up to two years. If they take someone on who has been unemployed for two years or more, they get €400 a month cash back for every month they employ the person paid by electronic fund transfer the month after the person has worked. I inherited several supports for employers when I took office that spanned the Revenue Commissioners and the Department. From my commercial experience, I found them hard to understand. We have tried to make the JobsPlus programme as easy as possible. Employers and individuals can register for it. Essentially, it is about giving a long-term unemployed person a job. An employer, once registered for the scheme, will get the cash back at the end of the first month the person commenced working. We started this scheme in July. It generally takes three months before we first start seeing results so I look forward to feedback from Senators on this.

We will be monitoring and encouraging recruitment from the live register by client firms of the enterprise development agencies. This week alone there have been announcements of more than 600 new jobs. Obviously, some of these jobs will be filled by existing workers or new entrants into the labour market. We are doubling the number of caseworkers employed within the Department on activation duties to increase capacity to engage with live register clients, in particular long-term unemployed people, while also finalising proposals for contracting additional capacity for employment services for long-term unemployed people.

Measures reducing long-term unemployment will have spill-over benefits for jobless households. We also plan to take additional measures in this area. These include, for example, monitoring the migration of people from jobseeker to other welfare payments and reviewing, over a number of years, the capacity for work of long-term recipients of illness and disability payments. Two years ago, I introduced a partial capacity benefit. The Department will facilitate those who had a serious illness or disability to get back into work. In the current economic climate, they find it difficult to get back into the workplace. This benefit and the employability services concentrating on their abilities will assist those in such circumstances.

We are also considering activation interventions for lone parents and the partners or spouses of unemployed people. We will continue to work to identify the specific factors underlying the concentration of joblessness in particular households, and to bring forward further measures to address this problem. We have set detailed targets and have approximately 50 planned actions. When people have come back to me and asked if I can do something to make JobBridge or Tús more flexible, we have tried to listen and introduce a level of flexibility that meets the requirements of employers.

The reduction of 21,000 in the live register is a very positive development. The growth in employment of more than 33,000 is a very positive development. Were we in the United States, those would be taken as two key indicators of being on the road to recovery. That is why we see those figures almost every week, asking whether the number of people at work is going up. That is the key indicator. I am happy to say that slowly but progressively we are beginning to offer people who have been locked out of employment an opportunity to participate in the workforce. Since we took over community employment I have visited many of the community employment schemes around the country. Where people are on a placement for two years or more we are trying to ensure they emerge from that with an educational qualification, such as FETAC level 5, so that no only are they contributing to the community but developing skills that will help them get back to work.

I welcome to the Visitors Gallery a former colleague of ours, former Senator Geraldine Feeney, and Father Peter Casey, parish priest of Kilmore, County Cavan.

I welcome the Minister and wish her continued success in her very serious responsibility. Despite the improvement and stabilisation of the economic system in our country, there is a very serious crisis in the number of people unemployed. We seem to be immune to the 13.4% of unemployed people and the increasing number of long-term unemployed. On Saturday, 14 September I attended the Career Zoo recruitment event at the Convention Centre in Dublin. Leading companies such as Amazon, Accenture, AOL, Boston Scientific, Facebook and many others were in attendance as well as leading Irish colleges such as Dublin Institute of Technology, DIT, and the National College of Ireland. Springboard and Skillnet were also represented, two admirable schemes. There are 3,000 jobs available but we have not got the people to fill those jobs. That is the tragedy.

We have a very high unemployment rate, which would be far more serious if we did not have 245 people emigrating per day. Many people want to emigrate, including members of my family, who want to be in the United States, Singapore or wherever, but there is a bitterness in society among grandparents. I find that very moving because we had that in the 1980s with so many people emigrating, as the Minister will remember. Some returned but many did not, so grandparents were deprived of the relationship with their grandchildren and vice versa. Any of us who knew our grandparents know they are a major influence on our lives.

After speaking to the people at Career Zoo, we are not getting the message across. As a business person I find it very frustrating that people have to upskill to get the available jobs. This is going on and on. The pace of catching up and upskilling is far too slow. There is a mismatch between the market and the demand for highly-skilled graduates in IT, finance and a wide range of subjects. We are not meeting that demand. The expert group on future skills needs spelled out the same. We had the winner of the Nobel Prize for economics in the House a year ago and I drew his attention to this matter of 3,000 jobs being available. We do not have the graduates with the multilingual skills.

There is a kind of lethargy about solving the problem. As I said numerous times in our party, there is a lack of political drive for the Minister, not the Department officials, to resolve the problem. Maybe it should be opened up to the private sector to resolve the problem. Having established Lir Chocolates during the last recession, when we had 40% unemployment in some parts of the country, I saw the physical and emotional transformation in a person when he or she got a job. It is a major responsibility on the shoulders of the Government to deal with this in a more proactive manner. Projects such as the expert group on future skills needs, Skillnets and MOMENTUM are admirable but there must be a passion about resolving this 13.4% unemployed rate and the increasing number of long-term unemployed, which has terrible, debilitating effects on their families and themselves.

We must take into consideration the view of the OECD and the EU. In its report in September the OECD said: "Ireland's long-term unemployed are at risk of becoming permanent casualties of the recession as new and better qualified jobseekers take advantage of the recovery." The OECD report showed that one in five children live in households where nobody works. This is the highest proportion in the EU, indicating serious risk of the persistence of social exclusion. Pathways to Work 2013 has some impressive headline goals. Unfortunately the Government's record in implementing these goals in previous plans has not been good, as outlined in the OECD and EC reports.

There must be a much more aggressive response to solving this problem. The OECD report stated:

Decisive interventions in the labour market are needed to avoid the unemployment rate remaining high for many years to come. Higher aggregate demand and job creation are essential for bringing down unemployment but they will not be sufficient. Decisive interventions in labour market policies are needed to avoid the unemployment rate remaining high, risking a rising structural unemployment rate which would hamper growth and exacerbate inequality and social exclusion.

The European Commission report this year stated that progress has not been sufficiently fast and more needs to be done. Delays have been experienced in some other priority areas for structural reform. The Commission went on to say the pace of reforms and resources mobilised are, at times, insufficient given the scale of the situation. It also criticised the lack of case workers to help the unemployed, rapid decision making and attention to upskilling young people and the long-term unemployed.

I accept that the Minister is doing her best and that she is first-class, but when young people seek advice on where they should go for jobs, they only have a couple of minutes with a career adviser. It is not good enough that she hopes to be on top of the problem by Christmas. If this was a private business dealing with an issue that had arisen, it would be working on a 24-7 basis until it was resolved. There is a psychological distance between the Government and the reality of unemployment. Having seen how people can transform when they find jobs, I want to see greater passion. I am not blaming the Minister because she must contend with a traditional bureaucracy that works at a different tempo in solving problems. I know exactly how this works because when we were in government, we had experience of blockages in the bureaucratic system.

Every day 245 people emigrate. The unemployment rate is 13.4% and the number of long-term unemployed is on the rise. The Minister should be attending meetings of the four man economic council that is running the country, given the serious nature of her responsibilities. Approximately 10,000 people attended the career guidance fair in the Convention Centre. The fair was aimed at professionals and those with graduate skills. Some 3,000 jobs are available, but we have to be faster in upskilling people to fill these vacancies. I do not have a problem with the fact that people are coming here from abroad to work in PayPal because of its requirements for individuals with linguistic skills. Cross-fertilisation of ideas and people coming here from abroad enhance all of us. However, we also want to look after our own people. It is disturbing that the Government thinks it is great that the unemployment rate has fallen to 13.4% and it is irritating that it gets excited about a growth rate of 0.4%. It claims that we have turned the corner based on an increase in one quarter, while overlooking the overall trend.

I speak as a former employer and a current board member of Lir Chocolates which I set up to create employment. I had never heard of the word "profit". I got pleasure from creating jobs and I am still on a mission to do this. On 12 December I will be hosting a conference in Dundrum Town Centre on revitalising the reatail sector.

We will be exploring the issue of bad planning. The retail sector employs 350,000 people. It is the biggest employer in the country, but it is in crisis because of the lack of spending by people and the Government. I do not blame the Minister for any of this because I know she is passionate about her brief. She referred to her commercial experience. How many of the four members of the economic council possess similar experience? I acknowledge that the Tánaiste helped to solve two problems that required compassion. I have two Traveller friends who have high regard -----

I thank the Senator, but we have to show compassion to other speakers.

I am a fan of the Minister and do not deny that the Tánaiste has compassion. However, the members of the econominc council lack commercial experience. They are running the country.

I call Senator Hildegarde Naughton. Is this the Senator's first speech?

I wish her well in the remaining two and a half years of this Seanad and, I hope, during the term of the next Seanad, if she is lucky enough to be elected to it.

I welcome the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton. In the Taoiseach's address at the recent IBEC president's dinner he stated: "When this Government came into office we declared that we could no longer tolerate a passive welfare system that abandoned hundreds of thousands of people to unemployment without any real support or engagement." The Government has been proactive in addressing this issue by introducing the Pathways to Work strategy. I compliment all Departments on their commitment in tackling the issue head-on. Long-term unemployment is a cancer in our society. It is demoralising and the psychological implications can lead to the loss of friends, confidence, isolation and depression. Skills previously acquired become obsolete, which, in turn, decreases the chances of gaining meaningful employment. Long-term unemployment also increases the economic burden on the State in the form of higher social welfare payments which lead to increased Government borrowing and less tax revenue.

The Pathways to Work strategy seeks to address some of these issues by putting in place a strategy not only to assist the long-term unemployed but also to support the betterment of society as a whole. The 50 point action plan involves all of the relevant stakeholders from Departments and State agencies working together. The plan contains ten key performance indicators, the first of which is completion of personal profiles of all 422,900 people on the live register in order that personalised employment supports can be developed for them. The second involves initial one-to-one guidance interviews with job seekers, with 185,000 such interviews to be carried out this year. The availability of profiling of individuals is crucial to the success of the strategy. This includes the length of time an individual has been unemployed, the implications of long-term unemployment and the individual's ability to engage with employment services and possible employers. To this end, I hope profiles will include self-development support and training for individuals before they enter any level of employment. It is imperative that any psychological need they may have is addressed, including confidence building. Many who have been out of work find it difficult to re-enter the workforce without adequate holistic supports. These interviews should not be about ticking the right boxes to create favourable statistics. They should be aimed at developing genuine understanding of a person's situation and his or her needs in returning to the workforce after a long period of unemployment. Will adequate upskilling, self-development and confidence building programmes be made available to them before they are expected to engage in interviews or re-enter the workforce?

The provision of a one-stop-shop of service supports is welcome as a means of creating a more streamlined approach to the service and support systems needed by the long-term unemployed. It is the intention to roll out all of the Intreo offices by the end of the year. The Pathways to Work strategy will not be implemented properly until all of the support mechanisms are in place throughout the country to meet the needs of those who require support. I urge the Minister to progress the delivery of the Intreo network in order that all of the services can be delivered effectively and in a timely manner. The pace of roll-out of these office is slower than promised. Is there any way Senators might help the Minister to expedite delivery of this vital cornerstone of the Government's jobs agenda?

An interim report recently produced by Indecon found that 52% of almost 3,000 JobBridge participants had been in paid employment since completing their internships.

The JobsPlus scheme introduced earlier this year offers employers fixed cash grants to hire people who have been long-term unemployed for periods ranging from 12 months to four years. To qualify for this payment, positions must be for more than 30 hours a week spanning four days and subject to the usual PAYE and PRSI deductions. A total of €7,500 is available to employers who take on people who have been unemployed for more than 12 months and less than four years, while €10,000 is available to those who are unemployed for four years or more. Unemployed persons who wish to take up employment under the scheme must be signing on for jobseeker's benefit, jobseeker's allowance or credits.

We are discussing the issue of the long-term unemployed, but we must also ensure school leavers or those who, for whatever reason, are on the live register do not become another statistic and in the future are classed as long-term unemployed. Is it necessary to review the eligibility criteria for those wishing to avail of internships under the JobBridge scheme? The current qualifying criteria to avail of a placement under the scheme are to be in receipt of social welfare payments for approximately three months or signing on for credits. We must guard against the danger that young graduates or those who recently lost their jobs may lose enthusiasm and self-esteem while they wait for three months before being eligible for an internship which may hold the possibility of offering new employment prospects.

The OECD report recommends that Ireland do much more to assist the unemployed, notably long-term jobseekers. It points to a critical need for support and retraining to ward against social exclusion and ensure young people are prepared to work as the recovery strengthens. Research undertaken by the ESRI in 2012 indicated a specific policy approach was required to address the issues of jobless households. During the boom years of the early 2000s the rate of joblessness at household level was very high by European standards. The ESRI concluded this reflected structural factors and had little to do with the recession. During the period between 2005 and 2007, when the economy was ostensibly strong and the unemployment rate was at a very low level of 4% or 5%, Ireland had a very low work intensity rate which oscillated between 13% and 15%, while it was 10% on average in the European Union. The ESRI found Ireland reported a relatively high rate of joblessness among working age adults. The research found that the proportion of people in jobless households had increased very rapidly following the onset of the recent economic downturn from 15% in 2007 to 22%, double the average throughout Europe.

The Government inherited a passive social welfare system which did not empower the people it was supposed to help. We now have a window of opportunity for long overdue reform of social welfare structures through the roll-out of the Intreo offices, tackling poverty traps such as replacing rent supplement with the housing assistance payment scheme, and additional management resources to assist in dealing with long-term unemployment. I commend the strategy of the Government and its commitment to tackle the problem of long-term unemployment once and for all, an issue which was neglected in the past.

I congratulate the Senator on her maiden speech and wish her well in the future.

I thank the Cathaoirleach.

I welcome the Minister. As I had not planned to speak, I will be brief.

I welcome the positive update and no matter how small the growth rate is, we are moving in the right direction. I feel very positive and feel like cheering. We can only move in one direction and I am delighted. I know it is small, but I welcome it. I also welcome the Minister's efforts to ensure work pays. This is a huge problem. The Minister deals with very sensitive issues, but reform of housing supports and simplification of other payments are very much welcome.

I wish to put a number of ideas to the Minister. I would like to see the awareness of employers raised. I am lucky to be here because when I attend management meetings, I am aware of schemes such as JobsPlus, but I have many friends in the food business who simply do not seem to know about them. We have the media and agencies, but would it be possible to use a little funding to raise awareness? The JobsPlus scheme is a gift from heaven for an employer. It is welcome that the Minister is increasing the number of caseworkers. Does she believe caseworkers have received enough training and upskilling? Are they motivated enough and have we injected them with enough passion to help people? Most people have been unemployed for several months at some stage. I was only 19, but I remember being such a depressed Dan at home with my parents because I thought I would never get out. We all have friends who are unemployed and know how demotivating it is. The caseworkers need to be on top of their game. I am beginning to sound like someone from the United States, but as we are putting employers on related bonuses for employing people, would it be possible to have caseworkers in performance related bonus schemes?

I love heritage and old Ireland and would like to see the dots being joined between the areas of tourism, education and social protection. The heritage budget was cut from €22 million to €7 million. We are in serious times and cannot cut for the less well-off and the heritage budget is easy to cut, but we are spending a fortune on tourism and have lost a lot of income through cutting the VAT rate. However, if we stop our work in the heritage sector, what will be there for tourists when they come? Heritage is all about communities and when work is done on an old building, it is usually people involved in construction or creative individuals who are involved. We are putting the country back together and making beautiful old things safer and better. We allow beautiful old buildings to be restored for tourists to see and the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Leo Varadkar, is as happy as the tourists. Community self-esteem also increases. I, therefore, ask all Departments to please join the dots and help the Minister in this regard. I call for the heritage budget to be increased because it will help to create jobs in an area in which we do not have to upskill people. We have many brilliant individuals such as stonemasons and those involved in construction. England seems to have beautiful thatched cottages in abundance, but ours are disappearing before our eyes. All anybody from the United States who comes to Ireland wants to see is a thatched cottage.

I was very touched by what the Minister stated about children in families where people had been unemployed for generations. The Minister for Education and Skills will come to the House tomorrow. It is very important that we keep motivating and injecting passion in these children who are so unlucky to be living in such houses because it is hard for parents to be good role models. I feel so elitist in saying this, but the dots must be joined.

I welcome the Minister. I heard she was at the ploughing championships and that she had been very well received, which is great to hear. I welcome the great work she is trying to do in overhauling the social welfare system. I will not quote all of the statistics she has given for the schemes available, as Senator Hildegarde Naughton has already done so. We need a change of culture because for some going on social welfare is a job for life. This has always been the case. Once somebody is in the system, everything else is free. This has frustrated taxpayers for years.

As the Minister knows, I was a community welfare officer for 28 years and I have worked with all of the various types of people who are unemployed. The ones I feel most sorry for are those who have been affected by the recent Celtic tiger crash as they are suffering more than anyone else. The reason for this is that, throughout the Celtic tiger era, we kept increasing social welfare and we could not get the long-term unemployed of the day to take all of the jobs that were available - we did not even ask them. No effort was made either by civil servants or the then Department of Social and Family Affairs to take people off the live register. It was simply the case that we would bring in the workforce from Europe. That was grand and we welcomed them all. However, the problem now is that we still have in excess of 100,000 who were unemployed back then on all types of social welfare payments, and we also have all the foreigners now on social welfare payments as well. That is the problem. I will repeat the point. No effort was made to deal with that problem at that time. If Deputy Burton was Minister at the time and had been trying to achieve what she has tried to achieve today, that problem would have been solved.

Another point is that, as the Minister noted, more and more people were becoming unemployed during the Celtic tiger years. Again, I credit that to the fact we were encouraging people to stay on the dole because we were promising that in every budget there would be an increase in social welfare. It was a giveaway during that time and the problem was not dealt with.

On another point, there are all kinds of poverty traps and welfare traps, and things we sometimes see and sometimes do not see. Senator Landy raised an issue this morning in regard to 18 year old children who are told they cannot get child benefit although they might still be going to school. During my time as a welfare officer, I witnessed many children who had just left school and who, on their 18th birthday, were down at the dole office. In an effort to take on board what Senator Landy was trying to achieve this morning on the Order of Business, we should look at issues like this. It might encourage people to stay in school until such time as they do their leaving certificate if they were able to keep their child benefit.

The Minister's targets under Pathways to Work are exactly right, namely, to ensure that every job goes to a person who is on the live register and to ensure that work pays in order to avoid welfare traps. I appreciate what she is trying to do with the rent allowance and the many other good initiatives undertaken by her. There are critics of the internship scheme and, of course, they will say that employers are milking it. However, I believe employers use that scheme to evaluate employees better than if they had just interviewed them. We all know plenty of people who are brilliant at interviews but then they will not pull their weight. I am glad to point to the proof that this scheme is working, which is that 60% of those who went onto it have now been employed.

With regard to the JobsPlus scheme, I have been beating this drum since I joined the Labour Party, as the Minister is aware. It is ridiculous to be paying social welfare to somebody to stay at home when half of the amount could be offered to an employer to take them off the dole. I appreciate Senator Mary Ann O'Brien's point and we need to get the message out there because I do not believe many people know about it. I have made the point repeatedly in recent years that if we created 100,000 jobs on that scheme, this would save €1.1 billion per year. It is there for everyone to see. There are also tax breaks for employers on top of the JobsPlus scheme.

I am glad to see that over 2,000 jobs a month are being created in the private sector. Senator White raised the issue of the 3,000 jobs for which we do not have the skills in this country. If I am not mistaken, there are as many under-skilled people in Europe as there are unemployed people in Europe, so it is not just an issue in Ireland but right across Europe. There is only one way to deal with it, namely, to upskill people.

As far as I am concerned, there are very positive signs out there. We can certainly see this in the cities and larger towns, and it is rural Ireland that is mainly hit, in particular through migration, although people do not mind that as long as there is a job at the end of the road for them.

I ask the Minister, as I ask her before every budget, to please look after the carers and not to consider any cut to the carer's allowance. That is another area where people are doing a job that we could not pay for, given the amount of work they put in while saving the Exchequer money.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I am afraid I am not as upbeat as some of the previous contributors in regard to Pathways to Work. If one talks to most unemployed people in Ireland, when they think about Pathways to Work it is about the route through terminal 1 or 2 of Dublin Airport to get off the island. We cannot congratulate a Government when the unemployment rate has remained almost stagnant and we still see almost one in four young people unemployed in this State, even though we have seen 400,000 people leave the island in recent years. I believe that is an abject failure on the part of this Government to create employment.

I also feel very strongly for the personal stories. Families are being split up by the economic policies of this Government. My cousin's husband is at this moment in Christchurch in New Zealand, having had to leave a couple of months ago because there was no work for him here. He had to leave his wife and two young children behind him as they could not go with him. He was not eligible for social welfare because he had been self-employed and he had no other choice but to leave. It is a disgrace this kind of thing is happening.

On the broader picture, the austerity policies of this Government, which are being driven by Fine Gael but totally embraced by the Labour Party, have been proven by international commentators to be the wrong way to go. The fact is that our economy is still flat-lining, as we hear from all the different sectors, including the business and retail sectors. People are just not spending money. The Government has decided to cut the income of people on the lower income brackets, who use all of their disposable income, and this has not helped at all. It is very important that we reiterate those positions.

It is true that a tiny amount of employment growth has been recorded by the CSO but it is a long way off the Minister's own targets and far behind the scale of the job recovery that is needed. As in previous years, Sinn Féin's prebudget submissions will be seeking more investment in capital and infrastructure in order to kick-start the economy once more. I hope the Minister will take that on board. Numerous international commentators now say that if we had gone that route a number of years ago, the austerity would not have kicked in as hard as it has.

Pathways to Work talks about deeper engagement with jobseekers and a greater emphasis on activation but that is very difficult to achieve without significant additional staff. What is happening is that the Government is redeploying staff from one Department to another but, without significant additional staff, it will not be possible to cope with the huge caseload that exists. The OECD economic survey of Ireland report, which was just published, correctly makes the point that the number of case workers supporting long-term jobseekers must be increased. However, the OECD and the Government are wrong if they think they can do that through redeployment rather than significant recruitment. As a solution, redeployment is a non-runner because it will exacerbate delays in the processing of payments of other schemes. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul to move staff from one scheme to another.

I take umbrage with a number of the statements made by the previous speaker, and I found one of them bordering on racist, that about foreigners on social welfare. I think it is appalling to make a sweeping statement of that type. The fact Senator Kelly mentioned that social welfare is seen as a job for life for many people is, again, a very dangerous and sweeping statement to make. There are many reasons that people can be long-term unemployed, such as historic, geographic and socioeconomic reasons. However, to try to tar everybody with the same brush is extremely wrong, and appalling coming from a Labour Senator.

I agree with Senator Kelly on the issue of carers, and people with disabilities are also being forced to wait an inexcusable amount of time for support. I agree that no cuts to carers should be introduced in the next budget.

Since the Government took office, some of the waiting times have actually worsened for people on the different schemes, and we can see that many of the schemes have been abused in recent years. A Minister came into the House last year and told us that people on JobBridge schemes were being used to clear the Garda clearance waiting lists. To me, that is not the reason the scheme was set up. We have to be very careful that meaningful schemes are set up and that meaningful employment is provided.

Between June 2011 and May 2013, the waiting time for carer's allowance doubled from 17 week to 34 weeks, while for the disability allowance it increased from 17 to 23 weeks.

Does the Minister intend to recruit or redeploy staff and, if so, in what numbers? Has the Department conducted an assessment of the impact on other schemes of redeploying staff to undertake the work on these activation schemes? There are not enough Intreo offices and there are not enough departmental staff to work in the number of one-stop shops that are needed, given the scale of unemployment and the growing numbers of long-term unemployed.

I draw the Minister's attention to the fact that since the CWOs have been subsumed into her Department, the services provided previously have been withdrawn from Connemara and most other rural areas. The Department is now asking unemployed people from places like Carna, Cill Chiarán and Leitir Mealláin to travel to places like Clifden in Galway to these Intreo offices. In many cases, there is no public transport available. This places an additional burden on those unemployed people. They will either have to pay for transport, get a hackney or hitch a lift. That is absolutely disgraceful. This issue has already been raised in this House on the Adjournment and I ask the Minister to review that policy because it simply will not work.

Pathways to Work plans to privatise support for jobseekers. The term "contracting out" is being used, perhaps because more appropriate terms such as "outsourcing" have negative connotations for a Labour Party Minister, party members and supporters. Indeed, one wonders what profit margin private companies will be taking on those contracts. In the final analysis, "pathways to poverty" would be a more apt title for this scheme because the Government is not creating jobs for the unemployed to move into. Without new training places, new investment in education and new jobs, the plan really is no more than spin. It is aimed at building up the hopes of those languishing on the dole queues, only to dash them when it cannot deliver. Pathways to Work is dependent on work being available and this Government is failing miserably to create the jobs we need in this State. If we took a much more proactive approach, such as that put forward by Sinn Féin in its pre-budget submissions, we would not be in the current situation. Austerity is not working and I hope the Minister will impress that on her Fine Gael colleagues, in particular, at the Cabinet table in the run up to the next budget so that we do not see a further exodus of our young people and those who are unemployed.

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank her for engaging with us on a very regular basis in the Seanad. Some of the initiatives she has taken in recent times were advocated by Members of this House and I compliment her on that. My friend Senator Ó Clochartaigh is being his usual positive self today.

I am disappointed that he has failed to recognise some of the very significant improvements and increases in job numbers that have taken place in the country, particularly in the last 12 months. There is no need to remind him of the appalling situation that this Government inherited when it came into office two and a half years ago. All Ministers and Departments were charged by the Taoiseach to be innovative and job-creating and to work together to create significant employment. The Action Plan for Jobs is certainly working and I know that the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, working with the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, is bringing about a situation where it will be easier for people to obtain employment and engage with employment opportunities.

The scourge of long-term unemployment is an indictment of successive Governments, which allowed two and three generations of families to be forgotten about. Such people have never experienced the dignity associated with going out to work to provide for a family and make a positive contribution to their country and to society. This has had a significant impact on peoples' health too, a fact which we should not lose sight of. Having people in gainful employment would have a very positive impact on the health budget.

Jobseekers are now offered group engagement, one-to-one interviews, skills and experience assessments, as well as training and work placements with the roll-out of the Intreo offices nationwide. I acknowledge the point raised by Senator Ó Clochartaigh and indeed, in my own town of Ballinasloe, the community welfare officer will no longer be based in the town but in Loughrea. Effectively, the largest town in the county will not have a community welfare officer and I am concerned about the hardship that will impose on people who will have to travel significant distances. However, I have been assured by the manager of the service that, in the main, interaction with people will be by telephone and e-mail and that in situations where people are unable to travel to the office, a community welfare officer will call to them. I welcome that assurance and ask for further assurance from the Minister that this will happen.

The JobBridge scheme was mentioned and I welcome the fact that 20,000 people have availed of it to date. It is a great scheme but I would like to see significant ongoing employment of the individuals involved at the end of the placement period. We should consider making it more attractive to employers to hold on to scheme participants because it has tremendous potential.

Senator Mary Ann O'Brien welcomed the cash incentive of €7,500 over two years that is available to employers who take on people who have been unemployed for 12 to 24 months. This scheme is under-marketed. We need to put more effort into ensuring that all employers are aware of this particular scheme, which has huge potential. Employers continue to complain that it is very expensive to hire an additional person and this is a real incentive that should be availed of. Senator Kelly spoke passionately about ensuring that work pays and that is an issue that must be addressed. We have to bite the bullet on it. Whether we like it or not, there are family configurations in this country in receipt of very significant amounts of welfare payments and such income is totally tax free. When one factors in the possibility that such people are in a local authority house with a very modest rent and may also be in receipt of a medical card, then taking up an offer of employment might not be worth their while. We cannot ignore that fact, which is contributing to significant numbers of people and families not taking up employment or even being interested in taking a job.

The community employment schemes are wonderful initiatives which bring great benefits to the participants and to the their communities. I urge the Minister to further increase the number of CE scheme places. I often wonder why some who are very long-term unemployed never seem to be offered the opportunity to participate in some of those CE schemes.

We have a culture of dependency and entitlement in this country that we need to address. We must, through the education system, instill more ambition into some of our young people. Children who come from families with no history of employment, in some cases for two or three generations, lack ambition. This must be addressed. Finally, we must make it easy for people to access employment and to sign on and off when they obtain short-term employment. I spoke to an employer earlier today who said that people who are offered work for five or six weeks should be able to submit their unemployment docket, sign off for the days they are working but be able to re-activate their social welfare-----

They can do that.

We brought that in last year.

Great. I will communicate that information to him.

Finally, I urge the Minister to ensure that the budget contains something to kick start activity in the construction sector.

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank her for outlining the work done by the programmes with which she is involved. It is always good to see a Minister outline his or her brief, not read a script, which tells us that she knows exactly what she is talking about.

There are a number of issues. We have talked about how the unemployment rate has stabilised but not about the people who have emigrated. If they were taken into account then the unemployment rate would be at a very worrying level. Obviously the youth unemployment rate is an issue of great concern. The Minister outlined many issues of concern. For example, one in five children live in a household with nobody in employment. That has been the case for some time but was hidden by the Celtic tiger.

I note the Minister talked about having 20,000 people who have been employed over the recent past and the aim is increase that to 75,000 people. It was not the Minister's party but other parties in government, who shall remain nameless, that promised 40,000 jobs per year. One candidate asked whether we would have to wait ten years to reach a satisfactory employment rate and a 40,000 jobs target has proved impossible to meet in terms of employment generation. I would like to get a view on all of those young people who have left the country. Emigration has always been a safety valve for Ireland and their leaving is a great loss.

I wish to raise a side issue that perhaps the Minister will raise with her colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes. The people who leave because we cannot create employment for them here have been told that they will never be given a vote in our Parliament, reformed or not, because they have social media. It is insulting for a member of the Government to tell members of our community who have emigrated, not only that we will not provide employment but we will not even give them, as citizens of the Republic who live outside of the State, the hope that they will have a vote, unlike 115 countries around the world. There are 33 members of the Council of Europe and only four countries do not give their citizens who live outside of the jurisdiction the vote. Ireland is in august company with Malta, Cyprus and Greece. Now we have asked our citizens "Why would you want a vote, sure you have social media?"

What are we doing to bring people home? A number of initiatives and schemes have been launched such as internship programmes. Amazingly, and I have raised the matter with the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, we cannot get them into the Houses of the Oireachtas. I am sure the Minister has struggled---

I am happy to co-operate but that is a matter for the staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

I understand. It is beyond bizarre that we tell everybody that our graduates are the best and bravest of what our universities can produce yet we will not allow them to come in here. We tell all of the multinationals-----

That is not the work of the Department of Social Protection.

No, it is not and I understand that completely. I have raised the issue with the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, the Ceann Comhairle and others. Amazingly, we still cannot bring those people into Leinster House to give them an invaluable insight. I am talking about people who are qualified in the legal profession or political science. These are the types of people who could help us formulate ideas for job creation and to improve the economy yet we will not bring them in or allow them to be brought into Leinster House. It is doable. Leinster House is not the most secure building in the world, its not the Pentagon and these people do not pose a threat. They would have a fresh set of eyes so could introduce new and fresh ideas that we would be amazed by.

I happen to be involved with a FÁS scheme in Kenmare. It does great work but in some instances one must ask where job opportunities will come from for its participants. We are lucky to have many tourism jobs in Kerry but the work is seasonal. Obviously agriculture also provides seasonable work. Hope is the most important thing that we can give unemployed people who are in their 50s and 60s. There are some excellent initiatives. Some people have been taken off FÁS schemes and one wonders whether one should put them on another training course.

I commend the Minister on the idea of having people sign up to engage with their community which is right because citizenship is about rights and responsibilities. It is important that people in receipt of social welfare do not spend all day sitting at home watching television, as does happen. They should be out in the community. They benefit from the community so they should be of benefit to the community.

I welcome the Minister. Without doubt she has done enormous work since she went into the Department and took up her brief. Some of my colleagues in the Seanad Chamber have failed to realise the mess that she inherited and the number of people who were signing on for welfare payments when she first became the Minister, and subsequently.

Over the summer period I had cause to be in the constituency of Galway East and met a number of people who work in the business community. A lot of them acknowledged that their businesses are going well and feel as if they have turned a corner. They were particularly happy with the JobsPlus initiative. There are also the Intreo offices that the Minister opened in Galway, particularly in Loughrea. I noticed that a common theme among the business owners was their reservation regarding people moving from welfare to work. Let me give an example. I met a lady who owns a coffee shop. She stated that she had noticed an upturn in the economy and that her business was going well. However, she said that she had great difficulty getting her staff to work extra hours and provide cover for a member of staff who was off on sick time or holiday time. One of her greatest barriers is the fact that her staff do not want to take on extra hours for fear of losing their family income supplement, rent allowance or single parent allowance. That is regrettable.

One cannot blame staff for opting for a more financially rewarding route. Perhaps the Minister can assist the small business community by introducing a sliding scale of benefits tailor-made for the individual in question. I understand such an initiative would create a heavy administrative workload. Surely a system of some description could be formulated within the Department that would enable people to take a lesser welfare payment one week because they are given more work. The Exchequer would benefit in two ways from such a scheme. The welfare due to the person would not have to be paid in full and the increased taxation would go to the Exchequer.

PRSI was another issue that arose. There was speculation that PRSI might be increased from 3% to 4.5% on foot of a report that was launched during the summer. I have spoken to a number of self-employed people who are delighted at the potential of being eligible for benefits if they fall ill or sick long term. However, other self-employed people find it very difficult to cope with, for example, paying high rates on their properties and making a lot of extra payments.

It is a difficult time for businesses. It would be an unnecessary burden on the sector if PRSI was increased to 4.5% as speculated. Instead of introducing a standard PRSI rate of 4.5% rate across the business community I ask the Minister to allow employers to opt in or opt out of this benefit scheme. I ask the Minister to look at that in the context of the budget negotiations and the introduction of social welfare supports for the small business community and the self-employed.

I thank all the Senators who contributed so thoughtfully to the debate. Some people said there are no jobs. That is not actually true. Some 280,000 jobs were taken up by unemployed people in the past year. Senator Daly will be aware there is much seasonal employment in Kerry in hotels. A person who is unemployed for, say, five months may get a job in the hotel business for another five months following which he or she may have a period of unemployment because of the seasonal nature of the employment. The technical term is that there is much churn or turnover of people on the live register. As we speak the number of new people signing on for jobseeker's payment is 14% less than last year. I agree that the unemployment rate is far too high for anybody to be less than deeply concerned about it. Finally, the figures have begun to move in the right direction. That progress and momentum is important. Once there is a start in the right direction, confidence builds confidence and builds expansion.

In regard to young people, Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh suggested that as many as one in four young are unemployed. That is not true. Many young people in Ireland, as Senator Daly will be aware, are choosing to remain longer in education, completing masters degrees and so on in order to make themselves more job ready. We also have demographics where we have peaked currently in terms of 18 year olds but we have a large number of young children so that there is a little change and we estimate that we have lost probably 20,000 people under the age of 25 to emigration-migration. It is heartbreaking for the families of those who are emigrating, who having reared their children during the Celtic tiger, felt that emigration was a choice rather than a necessity. For many parents, notwithstanding the availability of social media and Skype, it is difficult to see their children and grandchildren depart. Our hope is that because many of the people who go abroad are highly educated we will be in a position to welcome them back home in the next few years.

As of today, there are about 5,870 job vacancies advertised on the Department's job bank website, up 20% on this time last year. It is clear from hired.ie , a website that aggregates vacancies from all public and private sites, that there are about 22,500 jobs advertised. Some of these may be duplicates. The role of activation is to try to ensure that as many of these jobs as possible are filled by people from the live register. We have now had two positive quarters of growth in employment levels in the first two quarters of 2013. In terms of people looking at Ireland's debt sustainability, particularly those from the US, even if that job growth is not as great as we would wish, it is as Senator Mary Ann O'Brien said, a positive start and we must build on that momentum.

I agree with Senator John Kelly in respect of changing the culture. Everybody knows of some families where if the children have not got on particularly well in school that at the age of 18, they sign on. Speaking as a Minister for Social Protection I would like to see us move to a culture and a policy change where that would not happen, that instead one would do something else, such as giving to one's community through participation. "Participation" is a key word. It may be that in some communities or areas it is very difficult to get a job but contributing to one's own community is one way to start. I was happy to be able to negotiate the youth guarantee framework during the Irish Presidency when my colleague Ministers came to Dublin last February. This is an issue not only for Ireland but the whole of Europe. One must have hope in terms of young people. It is our responsibility to create pathways and opportunities for them, to coax and cajole them, and make it attractive for them. In terms of a social contract we almost have to reach further back into schools. In looking at education and training we must have a vision for the future of young people as they come through. One can see this among students in transition who are involved in entrepreneurship courses of various kinds. We have to start transmitting the message, "Yes you can do it".

In regard to back to education courses, where we support about 25,000 people at second and third level, questions were asked by Senator Mary Ann O'Brien and others about the training of the case management officers. This is a new direction for the Department of Social Protection. We have community welfare officers who are very experienced in one-on-one interviews. When the community welfare officer service came into the Department there were more than 700 one-hour or two-hour long clinics by community welfare officers in locations around the country. We examined the issue and found that a modern quality telephone service would do much. Where the Intreo offices are developed - we are relying on the Office of Public Works to roll them out as quickly as possible - we do not need the emergency payments of supplementary welfare assistance.

In areas such as Sligo, one can get one's jobseeker's payment or other payments sorted within a week. Contrary to what Senator Ó Clochartaigh said - I said this to him during the debate on the recent Social Welfare Bill - Sinn Féin's figures are out of order in terms of delays. They refer back to figures several years ago. In fairness to the staff, particularly in Longford but also in Letterkenny, there has been a huge reduction in the delays because we have put in place new IT platforms. We have cleared all the backlogs on FIS, domiciliary care allowance and carer's allowance and we are working on disability issues. The question of whether everybody who makes an application receives the award is a different matter. We are working on improving the quality of application and information that people provide. That the backlogs have been cleared is a tribute to the staff who have been able to do that.

We have also made changes in the circumstances allowing people to qualify for FIS payments and for self-employed people and farmers who suffer catastrophic losses of income. It used be the case that accounts covering a long period had to be submitted. Eighty-five percent of people who had been self-employed and who made applications for social welfare are now getting jobseeker's allowance. Their contribution of 4% does not entitle them to jobseeker's benefit, but if they have suffered a catastrophic loss of earnings we allow them to present updated information, which will be examined in detail. Some 85% of those applications have been successful. A critical reason people might not get much support is that they may have a spouse who is working.

Will the Minister explain why the appeals system takes so long?

That is an independent process, although it falls within the remit of the Department of Social Protection. I expect that as we improve IT platforms, that system will improve. Those in the appeals system have been working to clear the backlogs, some of which arose due to the fact that when the economy hit the wall there was an enormous upsurge in applications, under every heading, for social welfare. Many of the IT platforms needed to be renewed and I made a decision that we would go for an update and renewal. This has taken some time, but I am happy to report that with regard to the first three schemes - FIS, domiciliary care allowance and carer's allowance - the new systems are now installed.

In regard to dealing with employers, I agree with everybody that we should communicate more with employers on this. It is a budgetary issue, but it is important. Today, the Taoiseach and I met the labour market advisory council that I have established in the Department. The council is chaired by Martin Murphy, CEO of Hewlett Packard, and on it are a significant number of people from the private sector, such as Heather Reynolds, who is one of the chief executives of Eishtec in Waterford. Also on the council is the labour market economist John Martin, the recently retired deputy director of the OECD. The council will work in depth with knowledgeable people on how to get more people back to work.

Comments have been made on the OECD. Much of the commentary in this regard is about what did not happen in Ireland during the boom. The OECD has said that if we had adopted an activation approach during our economic boom, we would have entered the downturn with 100,000 fewer people unemployed. We did not and as a result we must start from our current position. With due respect to Senator White, the fact is that employment fell off a cliff in Ireland after the bank and construction collapse, resulting in a loss of 250,000 jobs.

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