Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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114. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection when she plans to publish the poverty impact assessment of the reduced rates of jobseeker's payments for young persons in consideration of the serious inadequacy of these rates and the impact of the pandemic on youth unemployment; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35179/21]

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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When will the Minister publish the property impact assessment report that was carried out in regard to young jobseekers?

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. The current rates of welfare payments for young people were constructed to incentivise young jobseekers aged 18 to 24 years to access further education and training, with the aim of improving employment outcomes. A young person who takes up a place on a training, education or employment programme qualifies for the full adult rate of payment. In this way, the State is seeking to address the issue raised in the EU and elsewhere of the so-called NEETs, that is, young people who are not in employment, education or training. A number of countries have similarly reduced unemployment payments for young jobseekers.

The initial evidence in Ireland in a report by Maynooth University was that the age-related rates had a positive impact, with a reduction of over 50% in average unemployment durations for people aged 18. Of course, one of the consequences of this approach is that young people who do not take up an employment, education or training programme receive a lower payment. It is important, therefore, that we balance the incentive or progression effect against the income impact on people who do not take up employment, education or training. Accordingly, in order to inform future policy direction, my Department undertook a poverty impact assessment on the reduced rates of jobseeker's payments for young people. The outcome of this assessment is currently under consideration and I intend to publish the report shortly.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, young people were among the first to lose their jobs due to the fact the sectors that traditionally employ young people, such as retail and hospitality, were particularly badly affected. To address this issue, the PUP was made available to students, who would not normally receive an unemployment payment. Many of the sectors that traditionally employed young people are now reopening and actively hiring new staff. A key priority for the Government is to get young people back to work. I plan to launch Pathways to Work in July.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate that where young people take up a course or training, they get the full amount. That is more difficult now and has been during Covid. The majority of young people receiving jobseeker's payments are on reduced rates. It is not just due to age. Many of these people live at home and the whole household income is taken into account with regard to means, which can see them get less or nothing at all in some cases. The report about poverty and its impact is important. Sinn Féin tabled an amendment to the Social Welfare Act in 2019. The report was due to be published within three months, which was a short timeframe, but it is now more than a year and a half later. I received an answer to a parliamentary question last July which stated that the report was being finalised. It is now a year later and we still have not seen that report. Will the Minister guarantee that it will be published before the summer recess?

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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It would be fair to say that my Department has had a fairly busy year. I know the Deputy appreciates that. Some 24 million individual payments have been issued to almost 900,000 people. Our priority has been to get these payments to people. If we had not done that, we would rightly be criticised here. I assure the Deputy that I will consider the poverty impact assessment and publish it afterwards. I am happy to have a further conversation with the Deputy at that stage. I will see what the report says and will certainly look at this issue. The programme for Government commits to looking at improvements to jobseeker's supports for young people, which I am committed to examining. I will also engage with representatives from various youth representative groups as part of my Department's pre-budget forum. I want to hear what they have to say about this.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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They will say that we need to end the age-related payments, because it is not right to base a payment on age. It should never have been the case. It has caused poverty in many cases. I look forward to seeing that report. I hope that it will be published before the summer recess and well before the budget, because as the Minister said, the programme for Government contains a commitment to restore those payments to a single level. That should happen and I hope we will see steps towards it in the budget.

The youth employment support scheme, YESS, has 1,000 participants after being launched in October 2018. That number is low. Have we looked at the issues with that scheme? Perhaps employers were not willing to engage with it. It is a shame because it was a good scheme. Will the new work experience scheme that the Minister is working to launch shortly replace the YESS or will both remain?

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I will launch the Pathways to Work scheme on 12 July. The best way that we can help young people is by helping them to get back into employment so that has to be the priority. I will outline the different schemes at that stage. There will be intensive work to assist people to get back into employment because it has been a difficult time. I was keen to support young people during the pandemic. Students received the pandemic unemployment support because I was aware that students lost their jobs as everybody else did. I was glad that we were able to do that. Approximately 47,000 students received the pandemic unemployment payment. As the economy has reopened, that has decreased by about 20,000. That leaves many young people and students who may have finished college and we want to give them all of the support that we can to get them back to work.