Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There will an increase of €30 million for social housing programmes. Against a backdrop of a €2.5 billion adjustment, these all represent substantial progress and show that when Ireland recovers it will be on the basis of a social and fair structure. Not only have class sizes been protected, so has child benefit. We will also be investing an additional €46 million in training initiatives for young people. This is part of an overall investment package that will see €1.08 million spent on supports to help jobseekers become job ready. We are slowly beginning to see the benefit of this step, with the numbers of unemployed people going down towards 400,000, as opposed to the 500,000 towards which the number had been heading.

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