Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)

The Labour Market Activation Fund, which I launched in March of this year, is designed to assist in the creation of innovative training and education provision by private, not-for-profit and public sector providers. It is targeted at specific priority groups among the unemployed, namely, the low skilled, and those formerly employed in declining sectors, such as the construction, retail and manufacturing sectors, with particular emphasis on the under 35s and the long-term unemployed. Following an open tender competition in which 370 tenders were received, offers of funding were initially made to 26 organisations across the private, not-for-profit and public sectors to support specific training and education programmes for the priority groups.

On 5 August, the Minister for Education and Skills announced the allocation of an additional €12 million to the fund, raising it to €32 million in all. This has enabled my Department to offer funding to 33 additional projects from a range of private and public training and education providers. This will bring to almost 60 the number of projects throughout the country being supported by the Labour Market Activation Fund.

The commitment of additional moneys to the fund recognises the quality and diversity of the programmes tendered, and the overall level of demand evident for these programmes, and will bring to 12,000 the total number of places available to the unemployed supported by the fund. Without exception, all of the projects approved for support indicated their acceptance of the funding offered. In particular, all of the 33 projects benefiting from the extra €12 million funding that I made available last month have been actively involved in promoting their programmes and recruiting participants for training and education programmes scheduled to come on stream over the coming weeks and months. Overall indications of interest and applications from would-be programme participants to date confirm the popularity of courses on offer. While there has been some variability in the pace of applications across programmes, no programme has not proceeded due to insufficient interest from the public to date. Several programmes have yet, however, to complete their recruitment processes.

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