Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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Question 20: To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he has contributed any proposals to the Department of Social Protection to enhance the hiring of workers living locally off the live register when job vacancies arise in a particular area and in particular if there is high unemployment rate in that area; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20815/12]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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There are two major elements to the Government's response to unemployment – the Action Plan for Jobs and Pathways to Work. The goal of the Action Plan for Jobs is to support the creation of new jobs in the economy, while the aim of Pathways to Work is to help to ensure that as many of those jobs as possible are filled by people from the Live Register. Both documents are fundamentally linked and recognise the need to reform our policies and our structures to secure long-term and lasting results for our enterprise base and for job-seekers.

The aim of Pathways to Work is to develop a new approach in engaging with people on the Live Register. It contains a number of targets, including the objective of ensuring that at least 75,000 of those currently long-term unemployed will move into employment by 2015, and to reduce the average time spent on the Live Register from 21 months to less than 12 months by the end of 2015. The public employment services are being reformed to provide better targeted services to both job seekers and employers.

The "Action Plan for Jobs" and "Pathways to Work" both recognise the need to ensure that training provided to jobseekers is consistent with the needs of the labour market. In this context, my Department is represented on the Implementation Team, chaired by the Department of Social Protection, which is working on the delivery of "Pathways to Work".

Details of the specific measures to target the hiring of people from the Live Register are a matter for my colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, Ms. Joan Burton TD.