Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Too often we do not acknowledge the progress we have made over the past six years. The unemployment rate six years ago was 15% and there have been enormous improvements and gains in this regard. This is despite issues with regard to bogus self-employed people, precarious employment and low-cost hours. Overall, huge strides have been made in getting people back to work. I was always very conscious of one particular group, who were in their 40s when the recession hit. They have probably experienced two, three or four years of unemployment. If they were late 40s when the recession hit, they are now in their early 50s and mid 50s. Statistics show they are now finding it more and more difficult to get back into employment.

I call on the Leader to bring to the House the Minister for Social Protection to see if we can engage in a constructive dialogue with regard to particularly targeting this group. The budget in JobsPlus is underspent for this year. There is a possibility we could develop a specific targeted mechanism through JobsPlus for this particular age group, which has many challenges. There is automatic discrimination by many employers against people because of their age. Young men or women in their 30s or 40s do not necessarily want to employ somebody older than them, often with much more experience than them, as they can feel threatened. We have an obligation to look at this group of people and to see what we can do and how we can assist them to get back into employment and bring forward particularly targeted measures. There is also a subgroup who received no benefit and so are excluded from any of the back to work programmes because the qualifying criteria mean they must be in receipt of a benefit from the State to access them. In some cases, a woman or man whose partner is in employment failed the means test and did not get access.It would be very worthwhile having that conversation in this House. It would assist the Minister in bringing forward new ideas in that area, not in a divisive way, but to see if we can work together to make sure the older, more experienced person can share in the recovery that is there.