Ms Bríd O'Brien:

In terms of the questions posed by Deputy Ó Snodaigh, schemes like the back to work family dividend would be useful in addressing some of the challenges that arise. In many respects, the re-introduction of the back to work allowance could help the transition because invariably jobless households have children. The dividend is a welcome development.

In terms of educational supports to break the cycle, particularly to address issues that face young men, there needs to be a link between education and potential work. It would mean that a lot of them could see the rationale for engaging and would feel there is something concrete at the end of the process. We have not been so good at creating that linkage or doing it that way. We need to address this issue, particularly in respect of the young men who live in areas where unemployment or joblessness have become a structural issue or remain an issue. We need to ensure that happens.

In terms of Senator O'Donnell's questions, today we are looking at the issue of joblessness. It is an issue of people who are very distanced from the labour market, be it because of their ethnicity, class, disability or parenting alone. Of course the individual may fit into all those four boxes.

We are not looking at the issue of unemployment per se. Overall the statistics on the live register are all moving in the right direction. However, we still have 165,000 people who have been on the register for more than a year and, within that figure, an astonishing number of people have been on the register for more than three years. Those people belong to households and communities that often deal with the issue of joblessness.

Things are beginning to move in the right direction. How do we ensure that this time around people who are often left in the margin are not left in the margin? We need to be honest about the issues of discrimination and exclusion in the labour market and try to address these issues. That means trying to get employers on board, to win them over so they will look at the live register. Currently, a lot of observations are made about the live register that do not stand up to scrutiny because there is an extraordinary cross-section of society on it. The register consists of people with all kinds of experience and backgrounds. Older unemployed professionals face the issue of ageism. We need to address a variety of issues in the labour market.

In terms of the mismatch of skills, that is an ongoing challenge and one which we need to address in the Action Plan for Jobs, Pathways to Work, SOLAS, the further education training strategy and in initiatives like Springboard. Some of these schemes are starting to address some of the issues but often a particular programme does a particular job. The challenge is to get the system to work without the necessity of a programme.

The Senator gave the example of when a large employer pulls out. In that case there is a need for a whole variety of agents to click in, to look at who is now unemployed, what are their skillsets and their experience and how transferable are they. Some people might just need to be told how to apply for a job as they may not have done it for 20 years while others might need to be reskilled. There will also have to look at the types of jobs needed, where are they and how do people access them.

The issue of transport is something that our affiliates living and working in rural areas raise with us. The tax saver scheme like the free travel scheme is great if one happens to live in an area where there is public transport but not otherwise. That is an ongoing and huge issue that needs to be addressed as is the whole issue of jobs in rural areas. One national executive committee member asked me to make that point strongly. It is a huge issue for many people.

The provision of child care by the State is an interesting and pertinent point. Given that currently many services are being contracted out and the role of the State, as a provider, is being diminished, many services will suffer. The State has a clear role to play, the community and voluntary sector has a clear role to play as has the private for profit sector. All three have a role to play and we need to keep that in mind.

Traveller unemployment statistics, even at the height of the Celtic tiger, were horrendous. The unemployment statistics for people with disabilities are horrendous as they were at the height of the Celtic tiger, so we have huge structural issues to address. At a time when we had technically full employment, the employment levels of people with disabilities was only 34% and for Travellers less than 20%. We have huge issues that we need address.

We did not go into the specifics of labour market activation measures today because we were looking at the issue of joblessness. The reality for many people who are jobless is that unfortunately those measures do not apply because they are not on the live register. We would be delighted on another day to discuss them with the Deputy. Colleagues of ours will appear before the committee in two weeks to discuss the work we did around Intreo and peoples' experiences of it. Much has happened. Again the question is how do we ensure it is delivering what we would all like to see. It is a person-centred service that tries to support the individual, be they unemployed, have a disability, or parenting alone to move from where they are into work. That journey takes longer for some people than others.

A huge challenge faces us around programmes such as community employment which provide a very important role in the community and underpin many services, such as Tús and others. The progression from those into sustainable decent jobs is not anywhere near what we would all like to see. How do we address that issue? Often programmes are used to help people get back to work or to get to work in the first place or to get into the habit of going to work. We need more employers in the wider labour market to say it is great that one is on such a scheme and to regard that as a tick. Much of that is perception and those perceptions need to be addressed and challenged. Much of it requires the Department engaging in the serious marketing of its own programmes, for example, by letting it be known it has 20,000 people on a particular scheme who are doing great work and that these are potential staff for employers. The Department is no longer a provider of income. It now incorporates the public employment service. At times I feel certain elements of the Department are keenly aware of that because they are in the middle of rolling out Intreo, but I wonder about other elements. In some ways it is regrettable that the Department's name was not changed in order to make all of this more visible.

When people raise the whole issue around perceptions that people do not want to work and employers saying they cannot find people, lots of people contact us asking where are all these jobs that people are talking about. Many people tell us they have applied for jobs but have not heard back from anybody and have never been called for interview or have never got a chance.

I can safely say that for all the stories cited by the Deputy of employers having a perception that some people do not want to work, we could match, if not exceed, those with stories of unemployed people asking where the jobs are and saying that they have not heard back, that they are not getting a look in the door and that they could do the job in question. That is where the matching within the Intreo service or the employment service now under the Department of Social Protection comes in. Those involved need to up their game and provide the service for anyone in receipt of a working-age payment as well as those in receipt of no payment. This issue arose during the Celtic tiger because so many couples worked. Many men experienced something that many women were very familiar with. A person would get to the end of the jobseeker's benefit payment but because of household means he did not progress onto jobseeker's allowance. Then, the person was left with access to nothing because he was not in receipt of a payment. Many women were already familiar with that dynamic but men began to go through that during this crisis.