John Lyons (Dublin North West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Minister of State the best of luck in his new role. This is a mid-term review of the Department of Social Protection as well as falling within the remit of the Minister of State - the youth guarantee encompasses both. I came from a meeting this morning in Ballymun where we got an update in the job centre on the pilot scheme. As the Minister is aware, Ballymun is running the pilot scheme of youth guarantee. I have the unemployment figures from December 2013 and September 2014 for the Finglas, Darndale and Ballymun offices. The 18 to 24 age category unemployment figure for the Finglas office fell by 1%. The same figure applies to the Darndale office. In the Ballymun office, the figure is 16% where the youth guarantee is in operation.

From that figure, it is safe to say there are signs the scheme is working but the message I am hearing - as there is an evaluation going on given it is a pilot scheme - is that the scheme is costly. There can be barriers to offering a guarantee to people. During the four month guarantee a participant is supposed to be offered another step on a career path. For example, that might be a post-leaving certificate, PLC course. If one is a medical card holder the fee is waived but there are other costs such as the cost of a uniform, for example, if a person is doing a particular course, or examination fees ranging between €300 to €500. Those financial barriers exist.

As this is a pilot scheme, there are some funds to address those issues. However, the concrete message on youth guarantee is it does work but it is costly. Countries such as Ireland which are only getting to a stage where they may have a neutral budget - I think this is the phrase being used - are not in a position to do as much as we would like, I presume, in identifying other areas around the country that are black spots in terms of youth unemployment. The amount of money given by the EU for the youth guarantee budget, which I accept is only supposed to support the scheme and should have matched funding from partner countries, is still very small. Many of the barriers are not concerned with the guarantee itself, but are financial. In fairness to the Department of Social Protection, it has looked at some of the barriers including eligibility criteria. A person has to be a particular age to do a community employment scheme. That has been addressed in the pilot scheme. The message is that if the EU is to be serious about youth unemployment, the funding being allocated to addressing it is far from sufficient. Whatever solutions can be worked out between member countries to address that would be greatly appreciated.