Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy will appreciate, the funding was EU funding. As Minister, I managed to identify and set up the programmes, which related in particular to young adults with disabilities, to help them access work, both in the open market and in terms of work amounting to more than eight hours a week because not everybody doing the programmes would have wanted to be involved in a very lengthy number of hours in a working week. The EU funding was conditional on all of these being pilot programmes. We will review the INDECON report, which will not take long to do. I have been with the peer group on several occasions, as has the Minister of State, Deputy Humphreys, and we are very familiar with it.

As a society we have a broader issue relating to young adults who have gone through education but who, when they come to be of working age, are finding it extremely difficult to get work that is attractive to them and for the hours they would be interested in and suit their particular circumstances.

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