Mr. James Doorley:

On behalf of the National Youth Council of Ireland, NYCI, I thank the committee for the invitation to speak on the youth guarantee.

The NYCI is the representative body for more than 50 organisations working with young people in almost every community in Ireland. We have 40,000 volunteers working in the youth sector in Ireland and around 1,400 full-time-equivalent staff. A lot of people work on a part-time basis but the overall figure is approximately 1,400 whole-time equivalents. A recent independent assessment of the number of young people participating in programmes run by youth organisations in Ireland showed that there were about 382,000 in the 10-to-24 age group involved. A significant number of young people are, therefore, engaged with our member services and 53% of those young people are from what can be described as economically and socially disadvantaged areas.

Members are well aware of the seriousness of youth unemployment, but there have been some changes in that regard since the crisis first hit. The number of young people on the live register has dropped relatively significantly since 2010, by approximately 23,000 to 24,000. Alongside that, however, we have seen an increase in long-term youth unemployment. At the end of October 2012 there were 30,000 young people who had been signing on the live register for 12 months or more. There has also been a significant amount of emigration, with estimates indicating that 142,000 people under 25 have emigrated. Obviously, many more between the ages of 25 and 30 have also left. Even though the number of unemployed young people has come down, the number of young people in the labour force has also dropped. In 2012, the labour force participation rate for young people fell by about 10%. Between 2008 and 2012, the number of young people under 25 in the workforce almost halved. It is important to put those figures on the record to demonstrate the scale of the crisis we are facing.

Levels of youth unemployment are directly related to levels of education and qualifications, which is not a new phenomenon. International and national studies have shown that young people insulate themselves against unemployment to some degree by continuing in education. High educational attainment will not provide complete protection against joblessness; figures show that the level of unemployment among young graduates was around 18%, but among those educated only to primary level it was 70%. Ireland has the fourth highest number of young people who are in the so-called NEET category, meaning they are not in employment, education or training. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions estimated that it costs approximately €150 billion per year, at a European level, to have that number of young people not engaged in the workforce or in training. The cost to Ireland is estimated to be €3 billion per annum. My colleague Mr. James Higgins from the European Youth Forum will talk some more about the European dimension, but the committee might be interested to note that recent statistics indicate that there are almost 14 million young people between 15 and 29 who are not in education, employment or training. That is equal to the population of seven member states - admittedly, seven of the smaller states - and is a staggering figure.

On the issue of education and training, we are of the view that while there has been some increase in the availability of some of the existing schemes, as well as new initiatives such as Springboard, MOMENTUM and JobBridge, overall, there are not enough places and opportunities to meet the demand. A few weeks ago an affiliate of one of our member organisations in Tipperary had a meeting to recruit 20 young people for a training course, but 120 turned up. Mr. Stokes would know more about this than I do, but there is evidence that many Youthreach centres have long waiting lists for their services. The lack of capacity is a major issue. We are particularly concerned that the young people who have the lowest level of educational qualifications and who may be dealing with other issues such as lack of parental support, bad experiences in school and so forth are being pushed to the back of the queue. The increase in unemployment has been so great and the demand for training courses so extensive that the young people with greater resources at their disposal are the ones who end up getting a lot of the training places, to the detriment of those who might need those places most. We did an analysis of some of the existing Government programmes and found that the number of long-term unemployed young people participating in some of them was very low, which is a worry. Additional efforts are required to address this issue. Youthreach is certainly doing a lot of excellent work but, as far as I am aware, the capacity of Youthreach has not been increased significantly since the start of the crisis.

We are also concerned about the quality of some of the programmes and courses on offer. While there is a lot of good work being done, there are some courses and training opportunities which are short-term and not very well targeted, whose value to participants is not clear or which may not be useful in leading to either further education or employment. We are spending significant resources in this area but the question arises as to whether those resources are being spent wisely and well.

We strongly welcome the youth guarantee and the decision of the EU Employment and Social Affairs Council last month to agree it. We compliment the Irish Government on securing that agreement. The NYCI was one of the first organisations in this country to call for a youth guarantee and for one to be implemented in Ireland.

However, the idea is a good one. The issue is how to implement it and how it will work in practice. For us, the three key issues are funding, quality and progression, and reaching and supporting the most disadvantaged young people in Ireland.

The International Labour Organization carried out an analysis of the funding of the youth guarantee that operates in Sweden. The analysis concluded that it cost approximately €6,600 per participant. Clearly, we cannot take a scheme from another European jurisdiction and plant it in Ireland and suggest it would be the same here, but I believe that figure would be rather low with regard to engaging with the most disadvantaged young people. Likewise, among some people who may need limited support, that figure could be rather high. Let us suppose we took the figure of €6,600 and applied it to Ireland. Let us further suppose we were to engage with young people who have been unemployed for 12 months or more. We would be facing an annual bill of approximately €200 million. However, we maintain that is money well spent because the cost of leaving that cohort of young people on the live register rather than having them engaged would cost us more in the long run. The €6 billion that has been agreed by the European Union-----