Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The important strategy is to provide people with options and opportunities. I would be distressed to find a younger person in their early 20s drifting onto social welfare as a permanent condition of their life. I am aware, as is everybody, of the huge drop in employment opportunities recently and most people are looking for work but if somebody on social welfare is drifting into long-term unemployment it is important that they be given positive options in education, training and work experience. People are offered positive opportunities through the initiatives announced in the jobs programme, the various educational initiatives and initiatives such as the back to work schemes and the Tús initiative, like the rural social scheme. In terms of people refusing positive options and opportunities to engage, and those opportunities and options must be realistic for people, people who are working in low paid conditions and paying PRSI should be entitled to be reassured that those who are long-term unemployed and whom the State is assisting to get back into employment take up those options. If they refuse to engage, there are now provisions whereby somebody's social welfare payment should be cut, but that is a last resort. It is important that people engage in positive options for work training, education and work experience.

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