Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have the employability service to work with young people and others with disabilities to get them back to work. I am happy to engage with the Open Door Initiative as well.

We want to increase the number of people being referred to the local employment services by approximately 50% next year. We will also be tendering to extend the service into several geographical areas which do not have those services. I have spoken to the local development companies to advise them this will be up for tender and I will be encouraging them to put in a bid to do that work. It is, however, a competitive process.

We are also assigning 100 new job coaches into the Intreo offices around the country to advise and support people. We want to increase the number of people availing of the back-to-education allowance by approximately 7,700. Approximately 19,000 people are currently on schemes such as CE and Tús. I want to increase that number of places on those schemes up to approximately 25,000 next year. We have secured additional funding to do that.

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