Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy makes a very valid suggestion. As we get down to very low levels of unemployment, with long-term unemployment now under 4%, people will need a different type of support because the profile of these people is different from what it was when unemployment was very high.

To answer the Deputy's previous question, one of the programmes is already closed. JobBridge is closed for new applications and the Gateway scheme is very much in the process of being phased out. There used to be thousands of people participating in it and the number is now down to hundreds. We should be back to a position where local authorities are taking people on in the normal way, which perhaps they could have not afforded to do during the financial crisis.

The number of people participating in schemes, including community employment schemes, Tús, Gateway and the rural social scheme, RSS, grew from 25,000 in 2010 to 37,000 in 2016. If we add JobPath to that, we are talking about 97,000 people on schemes and with services. We have seen an almost fourfold increase in schemes and services at a time when unemployment has halved. It is time to examine all that.

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