Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I assure the Deputy that I raise this issue at Cabinet almost every week and the message is getting through. In the case of small-scale construction contracts involving schools, for instance, many other Deputies and I are concerned that several were won by companies outside the jurisdiction. As part of our broader control and anti-fraud efforts, a joint project is under way between the control and special investigations unit of my Department and the Department of Education and Skills to ensure staff employed on these sites are properly registered for PRSI, tax and insurance. That is extremely important.

The Deputy raises the important question of how we can encourage Irish employers to give people who have been on the live register a chance. Many of them worked successfully for ten, 15 or 20 years only for their employer to go bust in the crash. They find themselves in a situation, through no fault of their own, where one year on the dole becomes two, three and so on. Research from the United States shows that an employer will choose a person who has just left school or college and has little or no experience in preference to a candidate who has a one, two or three year gap on his or her CV. Such gaps tend, unfortunately, to make a person unattractive from an employment point of view. That is why we are focused on the stepping stones that will assist people to return to the labour market. Some 25,000 are participating in the back to education allowance scheme, for instance, with significant numbers also engaged in JobBridge, community employment schemes, Tús and now the local authority scheme. These are critical because for people who participate in such schemes, even if they do not provide exactly the type of job they want, their chances of getting back to work, either in a new field or their original field, are hugely enhanced. That is why, despite the pressures on the Department's budget, we have increased the amounts we are devoting to employment supports. In the case of FÁS, SOLAS and the VEC area, I agree with Deputies Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Brendan Ryan that we must find courses that are relevant.

On the youth employment guarantee-----