Micheál Martin
Question:423. Deputy Micheál Martin asked the Minister for Social Protection her views on youth unemployment here; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [45859/13]
View answerTuesday, 26 November 2013
Questions (423)
Written answers
The most recent statistics available from the CSO’s Quarterly National Household Survey show the level of youth unemployment has fallen from an average of 75,000 in 2010 to 63,000 in the most recent twelve months for which data are available. The level of employment of young people appears to have stabilised, and indeed the employment rate (proportion of the population with jobs) for those aged 20-24 years rose from 46.5% in mid-2012 to 49% in the second quarter of this year.
In the first instance, the Government’s primary strategy to tackle all forms of unemployment, including youth unemployment, is to create the environment for a strong economic recovery by promoting competitiveness and productivity through the Action Plan for Jobs. Economic recovery will underpin jobs growth and thus reduce unemployment and long-term unemployment. 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. The Government is also implementing a number of programmes to assist young unemployed persons and keep young jobseekers close to the labour market.
There are five main approaches being taken to tackle youth unemployment: education, training, job search assistance/guidance, work experience, and encouraging job creation. These actions range across a number of Departments and Agencies and include:-
- The Youthreach programme providing 6,000 integrated education, training and work experience for early school leavers without any qualifications or vocational training who are between 15 and 20 years of age;
- The Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme, which provides a range of courses to meet the education and training needs of unemployed people over 21 years of age, particularly focusing upon early school leavers;
- The Back to Education Allowance scheme run by the Department of Social Protection provides income maintenance for unemployed people returning to further or higher education. Over 6,500 young people participated on this scheme in the last academic year;
- Approximately 12,000 persons aged under 25 completed a training course with FÁS in 2012. This excludes apprenticeships and evening courses;
- MOMENTUM, a scheme for education and training interventions supports the provision of free education and training projects to allow 6,500 long term jobseekers to gain skills and to access work opportunities in identified growing sectors. Over 1,250 of these places are assigned specifically for under 25s;
- The JobBridge National Internship Scheme is focused on providing work experience to young people with the total number of placements of young people on JobBridge during 2012 at 2,700;
- Long-term unemployed youth will also benefit from the JobsPlus initiative which is designed to encourage employers to recruit long-term unemployed people. Under this scheme the State will pay circa €1 of every €4 it costs the employer to recruit a person from the Live Register.
Looking forward, in addition to current initiatives, policies to increase youth employment will be supplemented by additional measures under the Youth Guarantee which will be rolled out in 2014. The Department of Social Protection has set up an interdepartmental group with officials and programme managers from the Department of Education and Skills, Department of Jobs Enterprise and Innovation, and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, to review the current range of youth employment policies in Ireland to assess what measures will need to be taken to commence the implementation of the Guarantee. It is intended to produce a concrete plan for the implementation of the Guarantee for consideration by the Government in December before being transmitted to the European Commission by the end of 2013.
As an initial step towards preparing for implementation of the guarantee, provision was made in the 2014 Budget for:
- Changing the eligibility criteria for Jobs Plus to make it easier for young people to qualify for the scheme.
- an additional intake of 1,500 young people on to the very successful JobBridge scheme
- ensuring that 1,000 places on the Tús scheme are targeted at young people
- developing a pilot programme to support young unemployed people to take up opportunities under schemes such as Your First EURES Job
- ring-fencing a minimum of 2,000 training places for under-25s by the Department of Education and Skills, under a follow-up to the successful Momentum programme that operated in 2013, with income support for participants being provided by my department
- the Department of Jobs Enterprise and Innovation making funds available to young entrepreneurs via Micro finance Ireland and other business start-up schemes.
In total, the provision across these headings in the 2014 Budget comes to about €46 million.
Question No. 424 answered with Question No. 421.