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

Retail opened yesterday, so I expect those numbers will reduce considerably over the coming weeks. One of the last sectors to open will be hospitality and accommodation so there will be a lead-in time for those numbers to come down. There are a number of sectors but we are happy to work with them all and we will do that across the board. Many young people have been impacted by Covid in terms of losing their jobs and we want to target those. We want to try and get people with disabilities back to work. We will have a good suite of services in our job activation measures to help people get back to work where they have not been able to go back to the jobs they were in. We will continue to work with them.

I want to say on behalf of the staff in the Department that we are here to help. Our main priority is to help people transition to new employment and get back to work.

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