Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy knows, the budget was based first, on Ireland being able to exit the bailout programme and, second, to provide opportunities for jobs. The Deputy understands that we have to be able to incentivise and motivate young people to a life beyond the dole or being on the unemployment register.

That is a challenge for Government and it is not one that is easy to deal with in a very short time. However, €14 million has been put into this system to address the challenge we now have to deal with in respect of young people being available for work and reforming the welfare system.

Deputy Martin will be aware that the number of jobless households, where nobody in the house works, increased from 10% to 15% between 2004 and 2007. That is about double the European average. Like myself, the Deputy will have been in houses like this, where nobody works. Before too long, nobody in the family works. That is very bad for the social dimension of who were are as Irish people in a nation which has always prided itself on its ability to work.

There is a range of changes here. Deputy Martin will be aware of the decision made at the European Council about the youth guarantee which will aim to provide adequate further training and education places for unemployed young people. That will kick in from January 2014 in areas where the level of youth unemployment is above the European average. Budget 2014, as the Deputy rightly pointed out, allocated an additional €14 million to increase the number of places for people, in particular for young people, including 1,500 places on the new JobsPlus scheme and it amends the criteria for eligibility for under 25s to only six months unemployment. There are 1,500 new JobBridge places for people under 25. Some people decried the JobBridge scheme which began with ideas of collaboration between the private sector and the Department of Social Protection. I know from talking to many of the young graduates who were unemployed and who got on the JobBridge scheme, that approximately 65%, or so I am told, are offered full-time employment out of that. Some 2,000 training places are being ring-fenced for under 25s who are out of work in 2014 at a cost of €6 million. Those places will be provided in the follow up to the very successful Momentum programme which operated in 2013.

Next year the Department of Social Protection will spend €1.08 billion on work, training and education places and on related supports for jobseekers. That is approximately an €85 million increase on the spend this year. The changes relating to jobseekers allowance for young people are being made in that context and that is to place a greater emphasis on work, training and education supports rather than on just income supports.

There has been a lot of ill-informed information about the JobBridge, or national internship scheme, but the facts speak for themselves. It started as a pilot programme, originally set at 5,000 places but it has now exceeded 20,000 places. As I said, 60% to 65% of participants receive full-time employment.

In response to Deputy Martin's specific issues, the Estimate for the total expenditure on take up of training, education and work experience opportunities by 18,000 young welfare recipients in 2012 was €170 million. Those figures do not include spending on a wide range of education and training opportunities which are taken up by young people who are not unemployed - for instance, apprenticeships, university or college places, post-leaving certificate courses and so on. Expenditure and the number of places in 2014 will be significantly up on those figures.

As I pointed out, an implementation group has been asked to produce the report for an Irish youth guarantee by the end of the year. That plan will be focused on helping 59,000 under 25s who are out of work. That figure has been reduced by 11,000 over the past 12 months. There are five main approaches to tackling youth unemployment, namely, education, training, job search assistance, work experience and encouraging job creation. That covers a range of Departments and agencies.

The Youthreach programme provides 6,000 integrated education, training and work experience for early school leavers without any qualifications or vocational training who are between 15 and 20 years of age. The vocational training opportunities scheme provides a range of courses to meet the education and training needs of another 5,500 who are unemployed and over the age of 21, but particularly focusing on school leavers. Almost 1,000 young people participated in that last year.

The Deputy will be aware of the back to education allowance scheme which is run by the Department of Social Protection and provides income maintenance for unemployed people returning to further or higher education. Some 6,500 participated in this in the last academic year. Some 12,000 people aged under 25 completed a training course with FÁS, whose name is soon to be changed, in 2012 and that excluded apprenticeships and evening course. The Momentum scheme, to which I referred, continues to support the provision of free education and training projects for 6,500 long-term jobseekers so that they can get skills and access work opportunities in areas identified as growing sectors. Some 1,250 of these places are assigned to people under the age of 25.

The JobBridge, or national internship scheme, is focused on providing work experience to young people with a total of 2,700 placements in 2012. Long-term unemployed youth will benefit from the JobsPlus initiative. Under that scheme, the State will pay €1 for every euro it costs the employer to recruit a person from the live register, which is another incentive.

In regard to the apprenticeship scheme, the allocation of apprenticeships is driven by employer demand. I listened to the chief executive of Aer Lingus speak at the Global Irish Economic Forum in Dublin recently. He made the point that in a European context, a major firm would employ not just 20 apprentices but perhaps up to 200 and that they would not be employed permanently by the major company but would go on to work in different spheres. We need to look at the capacity of Irish employers and firms to avail, to a far greater extent, of the opportunity to train, re-train and upskill young men and women in apprenticeship and so on.

The private sector is now creating 3,000 job per month. Budget 2014 allows for expansion there, including the retention of the 9% VAT rate. Some 15,000 jobs were created on top of the industry being stabilised by that. We hope next year will be a very good one.

There is a start-your-own-business scheme for young people who have been unemployed for 15 months or more offering them a two year income tax exemption. When I talk to young people and young people's groups, they ask if there is a chance for them to start their own businesses, whether manufacturing or whatever.

There is a range a of measures to support the construction sector. The home renovation incentive will prove very beneficial and when that is allied to the scheme available from the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, there will be real capacity. It can be done on an accumulated basis to claim back the tax credit. There has been an extension of the living city initiative to Cork, Galway, Kilkenny, Dublin and Dún Laoghaire for all pre-1915 buildings which a lot of people are interested in renovating and doing up. Some €200 million has been allocated for new capital projects, including the Cork city event centre, heritage buildings, the national sports campus and all the additional capital sports grants. There have been changes in respect of housing for the elderly and the disabled and the social housing construction sector. All of these will add greatly to the opportunities for young people.

It is not the answer to all our problems but given the circumstances in which we find ourselves, it is a good opportunity for 2014 to provide more incentives and opportunities for young people to get training, upskilling and jobs, which is what everybody wants.

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