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

As the Deputy said, people are getting back to work more quickly than we expected. A few months ago the projections were telling us that we would still have well over 100,000 on the PUP at the end of the year. In fact, we will now fall below the 100,000 mark next week, which will be significant and a important milestone. Some 500,000 people have come off the PUP since the peak. It is our plan in the Department of Social Protection to have job fairs - we had them in the past - at which we will link people who are looking for work with employers. I saw that work very well before. We have a number of different initiatives. We will have a campaign to make employers aware of what is available to them and then, through our job activation measures, we will work with people who are unemployed. The time people spend on the PUP will be counted towards any scheme or training they go on. It is important to say that time spent on the PUP will be taken into account when they are trying to get onto some other scheme.

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