Ms Inez Bailey:

Throughout the period of high unemployment, the Department of Social Protection has invited us to take stands at job fairs. It is very interesting to stand for a day and meet people at a job fair who say they cannot read and write very well, have been unemployed for 12 months and nobody has done anything about it. Coming to us to avail of a two-hour per week intervention will not address their unemployment. It is a very serious issue for people who, on the one hand, are being targeted for labour market activation but on the other hand, do not have the necessary educational supports. The programmes available to them are at a higher level and they are unable to take them up. They either drop out or, as Ms Phelan mentioned, they put up some reason for which they will not engage in the programme. At the fairs, increasingly, people were coming to us and telling us literacy was their problem.

Through the Department of Social Protection's probability of exit from the live register, PEX, profiling, unemployed people are asked whether they have literacy and numeracy needs, and people report that they do. Therefore the Department has the information. However, there is nowhere to send the people. There is a significant gap for unemployed people with literacy and numeracy needs. They are the people who are, increasingly, left in unemployment as the economy recovers.