Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection

Youth Guarantee: Discussion

2:50 pm

Mr. Terry Corcoran:

Senator Reilly raised two questions, the first of which concerned young people not engaged in education, employment or training. This measure has been tossed around a lot at EU level, based on EUROSTAT data but it obviously includes all of the unemployed who are in touch with us. Therefore, the issue is trying to identify the numbers of young, inactive people who are not in touch with any of the services. We are looking at this question using data from the CSO as well as our own data and have calculated that the number of people aged 18 to 24 who are inactive and not in touch with any of the services is extremely small. That is primarily because the means test for people living at home for jobseeker's allowance is such that people will get something, even if their parents have middle to high levels of income if they register with the welfare services. That means that such registration is particularly high in Ireland relative to other countries. We will include data on that question in the implementation plan when we are writing it up.