Ms Caroline Fahy:

Our members, particularly for young people and in rural areas, see that the only participation opportunities are schemes such as Tús which have no training element, which is a terrible shame. We are particularly concerned about vulnerable young people who leave school early and for whom there is not much available. We deal with the effects of it when they become people of working age with low incomes or no employment. The Department of Social Protection is introducing an internship scheme for those particularly disadvantaged young people. While we support it in theory, one of the issues with internship schemes is that people on low incomes find it more difficult to take those up and benefit from them.

We want young people under 26 years to have the back-to-education allowance paid at the rate of €188 per week to meet the cost of education, because it has been taken away. Such a measure would support young people financially, particularly those who are very disadvantaged, because money is a major barrier. People with a very low literacy level, below FETAC level 3, might not have many opportunities to improve their literacy in an intensive way so they can move on to FETAC level 4. We want the education and training boards to provide this so anybody with low literacy skills and very low levels of qualifications are not-----