Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 16 November 2004
152 Mr. Stanton asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the number of interventions by his Department that resulted in pre-employment training and development for each of the years 2002, 2003 and 2004; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28138/04]
View answerSince 1998, under the Irish national employment action plan, FÁS has been systematically engaging with unemployed young people and adults, early in their unemployment spell, to prevent a drift into long-term unemployment. Implementation commenced initially with persons under 25 years of age who had reached six months on the live register and who were referred by the Department of Social and Family Affairs for interview.
As the national employment action plan progressed, the programme was extended to include other groups crossing nominated thresholds of unemployment. This has been extended to cover all persons aged up to 54 years as they cross the six-month threshold and other persons not previously referred.
All national employment action plan clients are accorded top priority within FÁS in the allocation of places on its training and employment programmes.
A total of 3,074 national employment action plan clients were placed on training programmes in 2002, in 2003 that number increased to 3,968 while in 2004 there were 4,774 placements. On employment programmes a total of 5,260 national employment action plan clients were placed in 2002, 5,527 were placed in 2003 while 6,367 were placed in 2004. I should mention that clients may have had more than one placement.
