Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her response. The JobsPlus scheme is a welcome and positive step forward by the Government. In February 2012, responding to a query I raised with him about this issue, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, stated he was considering including in the Action Plan for Jobs a coupon style scheme along the lines I have suggested.

The JobsPlus scheme is being targeted at small and medium sized enterprises. From my extensive research into this issue with the west Cork jobs initiative, in which 12 local employers are involved, I believe the decision to tailor the scheme towards employers rather than employees will mean it will not attract the level of engagement required from employers. The Department and the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation should reorientate JobsPlus towards unemployed persons by empowering them by means of coupons. I have been informed by officials that it would be difficult to provide unemployed people with coupons because the live register frequently changes. The circumstances of people who have been unemployed for 12 months or more are by and large static and, therefore, unlikely to chop and change. This provides scope to offer the long-term unemployed a coupon which would empower them to seek a match among employers. Such an approach would achieve results much more quickly than giving employers responsibility to find a match among the unemployed because employers are too busy doing what they do best, namely, protecting existing jobs, to seek out people on the live register.

A second difficulty with the JobsPlus scheme is its title. While this may appear to be a minor issue, the term "JobsPlus" is difficult. We must empower people who are sitting at home watching the evening news on television. It would be much more productive to describe the scheme in terms of a "ticket", "passport" or "coupon" to work. I implore the Minister to use her good offices to review the two aspects of the proposed scheme that I have highlighted.

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