Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

The total number of people on the live register for March 2009 is 371,300, a monthly increase of 16,863. It should be noted that the live register is not designed to measure unemployment and includes part-time, seasonal and casual workers entitled to unemployment benefit. Based on the live register figures, the CSO estimates the standardised unemployment rate in March to be 10.9%.

The rise in unemployment is particularly unwelcome and is a sign of the difficult times that all economies face. The Government is determined to do all in its power to tackle the issue of the rising number of people who have lost their jobs. My Department, and its agencies are working together to respond quickly and effectively to the rise in unemployment.

In terms of job search supports, FÁS employment services, together with local employment services, have put in place measures designed to provide increased capacity for the rise in referrals from the Department of Social and Family Affairs. The implementation of these measures has increased the monthly capacity of job search services from 6,500 to 12,250 persons per month. In order to assist individuals through the provision of education and training opportunities, I announced 51,000 new training places under the FÁS training initiatives strategy. These places are in addition to the 27,000 previously planned for 2009 under the bridging foundation training, specific skills training and traineeships programmes and are specifically tailored for individuals who wish to add to their existing skills level and improve their prospects of re-entering the labour market.

In response to the significant downturn in construction related activity since the beginning of 2008, FÁS, in addition to the usual supports that it provides to redundant workers, has established a training fund to enable them to provide a timely response to identified training and retraining needs for low-skilled and redundant craft workers from the construction sector. The Government is also determined to assist redundant apprentices complete their apprenticeships. We have initiated several measures, which will see over 2,700 redundant apprentices being able to progress their apprenticeships this year. The measures to assist redundant apprentices include the employer based rotation scheme, which will assist up to 500 individuals, the agreement between ESB networks and FÁS to provide training opportunities for up to 400 redundant electrical apprentices and the interim changes introduced by FÁS to enable 1,200 redundant apprentices progress to their next off-the-job phase without having completed the previous on-the-job phases.

The Government remains intent on achieving greater capacity to meet the ongoing challenges in the labour market. In this context we will continue to bring forward further measures to make training and education services available to a greater number of unemployed persons to ensure timely and comprehensive access to the full range of services provided by FÁS.

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While activation measures will assist individuals in securing employment and enhancing their skills, the key to addressing our unemployment problem is the creation of more jobs. That is why the Government remains strongly focussed on supporting and promoting enterprise development to create new jobs. In this regard the enterprise development agencies of my Department, including IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland, are working to ensure that we continue to grow the economy and jobs even in the current more challenging climate.

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