Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will not be long-winded or engage in a long rant. The purpose behind the vocational training opportunities scheme, VTOS, and the back to education scheme is to take some of the thousands of people on the dole queue, who are unemployed and have no prospects, and give them an opportunity to re-educate themselves and reskill in an attempt to return to the workforce re-energised and with a new skill set. There must be criteria for every initiative offered by every Department but the strictness with which we adhere to the admissions policies for the VTOS and back to education scheme is counter-productive and goes against the spirit of the schemes.

I will give two brief examples. One gentleman in my constituency is three days short in terms of the stamps needed for VTOS. He was turned away and told to go home and sit on his bum for another year and return next year. Another man was 12 days short and is in the same position. Apart from being hugely frustrating, it is crazy that an official of any Department, particularly the Department of Social Protection, would instruct people actively pursuing retraining initiatives to go home and sit on their bums for a further 12 months before they would be eligible the following year.

It is criminal.

I ask the Ministers for Education and Skills and Social Protection to come up with some sort of creative mechanism so that people who are far outside the qualifying number of contributions but who are genuinely interested in retraining and reskilling can qualify for schemes, perhaps by buying extra contributions. We need some sort of creative mechanism so that the initiatives the Government has offered can be made available to those who are genuinely enthused by those initiatives and can avail of courses.

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