Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)
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Question 117: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment his views on the failure of the employment services policy unit to address the problem of long-term unemployment over the past number of years, which is at the same level now as it was in 2000, and represents over one third of the overall unemployment rate. [31589/05]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Since 1997 over 450,000 new jobs have been created. There has also been a significant fall in unemployment from 10.4% to 4.2% at present.

Long-term unemployment fell from 5.5% in 1997 to 1.6% in 2000 and this very low level has been maintained; it is now at 1.4%. This long-term unemployment rate compares very favourably with the EU average of 4% and ranks fourth lowest among the 25 EU member states. However, we are not complacent about this level of long-term unemployment and in order to reduce it a range of new initiatives has been introduced.

In addition to the FÁS and local employment services and the community employment, social economy and job initiative programmes, the most significant measure has been the national employment action plan referral process. This involves early intervention by FÁS with unemployed people. It seeks to help the unemployed to reintegrate into the labour market as quickly as possible by providing them with the necessary skills and supports to improve their employability.

Under this process, since 2003 anyone who has been on the live register for six months, and all persons were not previously referred and who were more than six months on the live register, were referred to FÁS for interview. The majority of such referrals were long-term unemployed. Since June 2003, approximately 27,000 long term unemployed clients were referred to FÁS. Since the introduction of the NEAP in September 1998, a total of 247,000 clients have been referred to FÁS for assistance. An external evaluation of the NEAP preventive strategy, which is due to be released shortly, concludes "that the NEAP process has been a success".

Other innovative responses developed by my Department and FÁS to assist unemployed persons have included: the Pathways programme, which identifies the most appropriate development pathway to assist clients to obtain employment; the high supports process, which assists clients on a multi-agency basis to address personal barriers to employment; and the customised training fund to flexibly meet training needs of the unemployed. We are therefore continuing to engage with those in long-term unemployment through a wide range of labour market measures and activities to help them return to the labour market.