Mr. John McKeon:

There are just under 6,000 people currently on the scheme. The change to which the Deputy referred is that previously an intern could do two internships for a maximum duration across both of nine months. We got feedback in the Indecon report and directly from interns and host organisations that circumstances could arise in which an internship ceases for some reason, such as when the host organisation does not satisfy its side of the bargain, or the organisation and the intern are both genuine but are not a good fit. If an intern has completed, say, four months of an internship it effectively precludes him or her from undertaking another, because interns must have a minimum of six months to sign up. In order to give interns a second chance where an internship did not work out the first time, we decided to increase the aggregate duration that an intern could spend on internships to 18 months, but the individual duration is still a maximum of nine months. That is the change we made and it is for the purpose of giving interns a second chance. It was a strong recommendation from interns.

In regard to the point raised about the experience of people on internships, an unfortunate consequence of the recession is that 95%-plus of those on the live register have previous employment experience. It is not the same as previous recessions, when many people came into the labour market and never worked. This time there has been a huge loss of jobs. Therefore, a large number of people on the live register have much experience. I do not think we can preclude people who have been unemployed for at least three months out of a period of six months from participating on an internship just because they have experience. We do not have statistics on this, but anecdotally - I try to meet as many jobseekers as possible - many of those who work find internships work best for them. They may be people in their mid-40s to mid-50s who have been made unemployed and cannot get back on the employment ladder because employers are seeking recent graduates. A person in that age group will be accepted on an internship and then it is discovered that they have far more experience and better life skills than a graduate. Some people have found that is the only way for them to get back to work. Some of the success stories have been people in the mid-40s to early-60s category.