Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I thank Deputy Humphreys for raising this issue. The Department of Social Protection operates a range of activation measures which aim to assist and support social welfare recipients of working age to engage and re-engage with education, training and work experience with a view to reducing their dependency on social welfare and ultimately to assist them in gaining employment. The Department has estimated expenditure of €970 million on employment supports in 2012, up from €861 million in 2011. This increase in spending of €109 million against a backdrop of significant fiscal consolidation underlines the Government's commitment to enhancing support for employment. Overall, the Department will offer 85,650 job placement, work experience and education initiatives in 2012.

The Pathways to Work policy, which was launched by the Government on 23 February, incorporates the establishment of the new national employment and entitlements service and commits to a new approach to the provision of services for unemployed people. The objective is to reduce the level of long-term unemployment and ensure those who are unemployed will be provided with appropriate advice, support, education and training to take advantage of new job opportunities as the economy recovers. This reform will give effect to the policy principle that people have both rights and responsibilities as part of the activation agenda.

Activation interventions under the Pathways to Work approach will be based on client profiling. The key benefit of the profiling approach is that it will identify those who are most likely to fall into long-term unemployment at an early stage. This will enable early intervention and intensive engagement with those individuals who demonstrate characteristics that suggest they may move into long-term unemployment. The profiling system will facilitate differentiation in the services provided so that each customer receives the level of support and intervention that is appropriate to his or her needs.

A high level policy review of certain activation measures is nearing conclusion. The review examines, among other matters, the eligibility criteria, payment rates and duration of participation of certain activation schemes, while also examining the interaction of the schemes with a view to concluding if the current suite of measures can satisfy the current and future activation needs of the Department and its customers. It encompasses work programme and placement schemes such as the community employment scheme, rural social scheme, Tús and JobBridge, while also examining measures that support education, training and self-employment, such as the back to education allowance, technical assistance and training scheme, technical employment support grant and both the back to work enterprise and short-term enterprise allowance schemes.

See this speech in context