Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps in his second reply the Minister of State might tell us how many are in receipt of long-term jobseeker's allowance. In other words, how many have been in receipt of the allowance for more than one year? The longer someone is on the allowance, the less likely it is he or she will ever find employment on a sustainable basis.

The second issue which has been totally ignored is that the older one gets, the more difficult it becomes to find commercial employment. I suggest two changes. Rather than cut the Tús scheme which is totally regressive, once someone is over 50 years of age, he or she should be able to stay on the scheme for as long as he or she wants. Second, everybody, no matter what age he or she is, should be offered a second year on the Tús scheme or the community employment scheme where there is no one else to take his or her place. The reason the scheme was transferred from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection to the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation was that the latter was living in cloud cuckoo land where everyone in the country was going to find a commercial job. The Minister of State tells us there is full employment, but there are 100,000 people signing on. The reality is that there are people who will never find commercial employment. It is time the State faced up to this and politicians took charge of the issue and said the people in question would be better off working than idle.

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