Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Our priority for them is to get them into training, activation, education or work placement programmes. I suggest that the scheme under discussion is not the appropriate one for them. A scheme that has been introduced as part of our efforts to get people back into work - the back to work enterprise allowance - might be the most appropriate one for them. It enables young and old people who have ideas to get social welfare support while pursuing those ideas. Having closed the back to work scheme, we decided to focus on the back to work enterprise allowance in order to encourage innovation and enterprise. At the end of last year, some 6,603 people were availing of the enterprise scheme. The relevant figure for short-term enterprise allowance, which was also mentioned by the Deputy, was 1,195.

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