Mr. R?n?n Hession:

Looking first at the educational supports, I will speak to two main cohorts and if I have not covered anything then please let me know. Deputy Clarke referred to carers. We have a budget under the Dormant Accounts Fund, which is primarily spent with two main groups, namely, Family Carers Ireland and Care Alliance Ireland. We have met them to discuss their projects and to engage with carers, many of whom have been out of the workplace for quite some time. First, it is about identifying where people are at in their lives and identifying what they are looking at preparing for. There is no job-seeking obligation on them. It is not our initiative to try to move them into work but there is definitely an appetite in that regard among carers, for financial reasons and for their sense of themselves and their sense of independence, and for keeping in touch. We have had some good progress with those groups. Originally under that measure we had focused on disabilities for a number of years. In response, the carers' groups had come to us and told us they felt that they could make a difference in that space and particularly for younger carers who are often forgotten about. We ran a programme, we got the responses, and those projects are going very well. We received some feedback as part of an annual carers' forum. Zoe Hughes and some of the other people who ran some of the projects gave us some good feedback. There are a lot of issues coming out of that, some of which are around training deficits, some are around people being unsure of their own worth or attractiveness, and there is definitely a confidence issue when people re-engage.

Some of it is about building up people's confidence and appetite. In terms of lone parents, it depends on the payment a person is on. If a person is on the one-parent family payment, there is not necessarily an obligation to engage, but there are training supports when the youngest child is over seven and a person goes onto the jobseeker's transition payment.

We are doing a pilot project at the moment in the north east, from our Dundalk office. It is a collaboration with One Family. There are parallel projects being done in Finland and Greece. It is about experimenting with what works. We are open to ideas. It is difficult when there are cohorts that have family requirements and people trying to do blended work. We know from internal analysis we have done on what type of supports lone parents need that a significant number are working. Half of the people on the working family payment, for example, are lone parents, and many of the people on the jobseeker's transition payment are working. We contacted people and said we would like to talk to them about employment opportunities and they asked us if they had to take a day off work to do that as they were already working. We have formal supports in terms of the education system. For example, people can get the back-to-education allowance, which means they can keep a proportion of the payment for two years when they go back to education. Likewise, for people who start their own business, we have a parallel scheme called the back-to-work enterprise allowance. Other than that, it is about working with a case officer signposting SOLAS or other training and educational opportunities, assessing people's CVs and their experience and trying to connect them with the opportunities. It is an area where we are trying a few things, usually in partnership with a stakeholder or NGO group that works closely with these communities. That is how we work it.