The Department provides a range of employment and work experience supports for unemployed people. During 2012, an average of 48,700 persons availed of these schemes. These include JobBridge; the employment programmes, TÚS, the Rural Social Scheme, and Community Employment; and support for people setting up their own businesses by means of the Back to Work Enterprise Allowance and Short-term Enterprise Allowance. The employment programmes in particular are targeted for those who are long-term unemployed. For 2013, it is intended to increase employment and work experience places to 60,000. I expect these additional places to be fully taken up during the year. This will have a commensurate impact of reducing the Live Register in the short-term while persons avail of these programmes.
A particular emphasis will be placed on an intensified approach to engaging with long-term unemployed in 2013. Towards this end the Department intends, during 2013, to:
1. Commence a project to profile all c 420,000 clients on the live register. This will help the Department to prioritise the selection of clients for assistance and to allocate scarce places on training and activation schemes.
2. Increase the number of its own staff assigned to case work/employment services duties.
In addition, a major initiative planned for 2013 will be the streamlining of the existing Revenue Job Assist and Employer PRSI schemes into a single easy to administer scheme that offers an attractive incentive to employers recruiting people who are long-term unemployed.
While there should be an impact in the medium to long term in improving people’s probability of exit from the Live Register as a result of these measures, the impact is not quantifiable. However, we do have some preliminary evaluation of the outcomes from the JobBridge Internship Scheme, which forms a significant component of the Pathways to Work approach. The findings of the interim evaluation of JobBridge, by Indecon found that 61% of interns who completed their internship secured employment within 5 months. These progression rates compare favourably with European averages in this area and represent very significant progress in a short period of time. It is expected that the progression outcomes in respect of those under 25 would be broadly in line with this 61% figure.
