Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

Budget 2011 introduced by the previous Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government contained an additional 15,500 places on three activation employment initiatives aimed at supporting the unemployed. The first of these initiatives was the work placement programme, which was expanded by 5,500 places in budget 2011. This has now brought the total number of places available to 7,500. Five thousand of the additional places are in the public sector with the remaining 500 places available for graduates in the private sector. The second initiative was the internship development programme. This programme aims to provide up to 5,000 12 month internship opportunities in the private, community and voluntary sectors. To assess potential interest in the programme, FÁS Employment Services last month launched a call for expressions of interest from employers.

The third initiative is called Tús, which is a community work placement initiative for up to 5,000 persons and was launched on 21 December 2010. Tús provides short-term, quality work opportunities for those who are unemployed for more than a year and currently in receipt of a jobseeker's allowance payment.

In addition to these initiatives, in December 2010 my Department launched the Springboard Fund, which is a €20 million multi-annual higher education labour market fund to enable unemployed people access part-time higher education opportunities. The deadline for receipt of applications for funding was Friday, 18 March 2011 and an independent panel will select successful proposals in the coming weeks.

Last December, my Department also launched the redundant apprentice placement scheme, at a cost of €7.3 million, to provide 1,000 places to assist redundant apprentices to progress their apprenticeship training. The scheme commenced in January 2011 and as of 11 March 2011 there were 254 redundant apprentices on the scheme.

These new initiatives are in addition to a total of 464,500 training and education places which are currently available in 2011. Of those, 140,500 are training places, 168,000 are in the further education sector and 156,000 are in the higher education sector.

Our programme for Government commits us to providing additional training, work experience and education places for the unemployed.

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