Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is welcome to the House and it is good to have her here. My amendment proposes: "The Minister shall, as soon as practicable, lay before each House of the Oireachtas a report on the measures taken to ensure that the €32 million being deducted through educed social welfare payments for the 18 to 26 year age group would be ring fenced and re-invested in productive targeted education, training and activation measures to maximise young people’s opportunities in this age cohort for work, now and in the future.” I acknowledge that the Minister is putting €14 million into the youth guarantee scheme but there is still a shortfall of €18 million. I am not saying that I disagree with her reducing social welfare for that younger age group but it is in all our interests to be interested in young people, to be concerned about the brain drain from the country in the form of emigration and to invest in young people. It would be a terrible slight on the Government if we did not reinvest the money we are very selectively taking from them back into them. We are relying on the 18 to 26 age group working to pay our pensions in the future. It is critical that we invest in this group.

There is no evidence that young people do not want to work. At the height of the boom, Ireland had one of the highest proportions of young people working in the EU. Irish young people have shown that they want to work; they do not want to be reduced to stereotypes. Unfortunately, as was part of the budget week narrative, the reduction of social welfare payments for young people entering onto the live register does not make sense for a number of reasons. First, young people who are already on the live register may be put off from taking up temporary employment due to a-----