Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 22 May 2013
146. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Social Protection the extent to which she expects to be in a position to address the issue of youth unemployment in this jurisdiction and throughout Europe in the short and medium term; the degree to which she expects any specific targets to be met in this regard; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24781/13]
View answerThe Government’s primary medium-term strategy to tackle youth unemployment is to create the environment for a strong economic recovery by promoting competitiveness and productivity. Economic recovery will underpin jobs growth. Past experience suggests that youth unemployment, which tends to rise relatively rapidly in a downturn, can be expected to fall relatively rapidly during the recovery.
In addition to promoting medium-term economic recovery, the Government recognises the need for interim measures in the short-term to support the young unemployed and keep young jobseekers close to the labour market.
In this regard the State already provides a significant number of initiatives which are of relevance to young people and the Department of Social Protection took steps in Budget 2013 to increase funding and places for schemes such as JobBridge, Community Employment, TÚS and a new state employment scheme in the local Government sector. In total an additional 10,000 places will be provided. Other relevant provision is made through the training and education programmes delivered through FÁS and the further education sector.
At an EU level the most recent initiative for dealing with the youth unemployment problem is the Council Recommendation for an EU-wide Youth Guarantee, which was formally adopted last month as part of the Irish Presidency.
The Recommendation is that Member States should: "ensure that all young people under the age of 25 years receive a good-quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education."
While Member States are encouraged to implement the Recommendation as soon as possible, it is recognised that implementation will need to be more gradual in countries with higher levels of youth unemployment and particularly severe budgetary problems. The government will now review the current range of youth employment and training policies in Ireland to assess what measures will need to be taken to commence the gradual implementation of the guarantee. This will include the identification of what would be the appropriate timescale for implementation in Ireland's current employment and budgetary circumstances.
In this context, the Government intends to work with all relevant stakeholders to maximise the impact of a youth guarantee in Ireland. We have sought funding from the European Commission for a proposed pilot Youth Guarantee project in the Ballymun area of north Dublin, and numerous organisations (e.g. IBEC, Ballymun Job Centre, National Youth Council of Ireland) have agreed to participate in this pilot. It is hoped that the findings from this pilot will inform both national and EU policy in relation to the implementation of a youth guarantee.
The scale and nature of any additional measures required for the gradual implementation of a guarantee at national level will depend on the trend in youth unemployment, and in particular the number of young people likely to experience periods of unemployment of more than four months under current policies. In this context, it is a welcome development that the official labour market figures published by the CSO recently indicated that the number of young unemployed at the end of 2012, at 59,000, a reduction of almost 9,000 on the same time a year earlier. It is to be hoped that this is the beginning of a sustained downward movement in youth unemployment as the economy recovers. Even so, the implementation of a guarantee will, almost certainly, require an expansion in the range of opportunities currently on offer to young people in the form of further education and training, internships, subsidised private-sector recruitment, and supports for self-employment.
In terms of targets, the government’s Action Plan for Jobs sets out to help create the right environment for the creation of 100,000 net new jobs by 2016. In this context, the Department of Finance anticipates that the overall unemployment rate will fall from 14.7% in 2012 to 12.3% in 2016. This could be expected to see youth unemployment fall from over 30% in 2012 to 24% or less in 2016. It is to be hoped that any measures taken by government in relation to the implementation of the youth guarantee will see youth unemployment fall even further than this.
