Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----and that is a function of the fact that so many young people are in education. The labour force is therefore smaller. It is not that young people are twice as likely to be unemployed. It is important to understand statistics in these things.

Touching on that note, somebody mentioned JobPath. JobPath refers people to Seetec and to Turas Nua. What we have there is something new. It has only been around for about a year. It is a placement service that supports people who are long-term unemployed to be placed in employment. There are 40,000 or 50,000 referrals so far. Of course there are going to be issues. In anything that involves 40,000 or 50,000 referrals, there are going to be issues. I want to know about them, I take them seriously and I want them to be addressed. If there are any abuses, they are going to be dealt with. To give the committee an idea of the figures, out of 51,000 referrals so far, there are 92 complaints. In anything that has referred 50,000 people, there are going to be 92 complaints or more. I meet many people who have been referred to Seetec and to Turas Nua. For many people, it works very well. They are placed in a job and are delighted to be placed in a job. For some people, quite frankly, it has come as a bit of a shock because for years they had been on a carousel of unemployment, schemes, a bit of training, back to unemployment and nobody had ever actually said to them there was a job for them and that they could go for it. It is not surprising that there is a cohort of people for whom this change in which the Government will find a job for them and place them in a job is coming as a bit of a shock. Quite frankly, not everyone can have their dream job.