Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As numbers of people who were unemployed are going back to work, there continues to be a significant fall in the live register, and that will certainly allow us to review the qualification period. I am certainly open to reviewing it. I hope the Deputy understands that when we came into office, before he was elected to the House, the live register was heading for 500,000 people. That is what all the economists were talking about. It is now down to 348,000, which is still very high. The Deputy will understand that the emphasis in the Department has been on offering the opportunities on Tús, community employment schemes and Gateway especially to people who are long-term unemployed. As the number of people on the live register falls, we have opened the community employment schemes and Tús, for example, to people aged 21 to 25, and reduced the time period to four months. I will certainly keep the issue under review as we expect the numbers to keep falling. With Tús and Gateway, we are also allowing self-referral by people who qualify in terms of the length of time on the live register. We get many people seeking places, notwithstanding the debate we hear in the House sometimes where the argument is that no one ever wants to be involved with a scheme.

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