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

I hope that Deputy Devlin is correct and that 90% of people get back to work. I think he is correct that a proportion will not be able to return to their old jobs, if only because the companies they had been working for will not succeed or the sectors for which they were working will struggle. It is important we have alternatives for those people, whether new jobs in areas such as housing construction, the care sector or green energy or other opportunities such as apprenticeships, higher education options, back-to-work enterprises and back-to-education options. The Minister for Education and Skills and the Minister with responsibility for higher education are doing some good work on that in order that we have opportunities and plenty of options for people and do not have young people on the pandemic unemployment payment or jobseeker's payments for a prolonged period. The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, is examining community employment, which is a good scheme and can be scaled up or scaled down depending on the economic conditions. Now is probably the time to scale it up again.

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