Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent)
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259. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated total number of full time jobs that have been created from initiatives which have been directly funded by the pension levy since 2011; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45939/13]

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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In May 2011 a levy on funded pension schemes and personal pension plans was introduced to fund the Jobs Initiative.

While my Department has no direct role in providing additional jobs under the initiative, it included commitments to provide 15,900 education and training programmes across the range of programmes set out below during the course of the initiative. Details of these additional places are set out in the attached table.

In addition, capital funding of €40 million was made available through the Jobs Initiative to fund over 370 primary and post primary school building projects. A total of €30.8m was expended on these projects in 2011 and €8.5m in 2012. The balance of less than €1m is expected to be spent this year. The funding allowed schools to carry out small and medium scale building works such as special needs access, toilet facilities, roof works and window replacements and to date 378 such building works have been completed.

It is estimated that the investment of €40m created approximately 2,400 direct and 480 indirect jobs in the construction sector over the course of the initiative.

The provision of these places has allowed 16,421 people participate in part-time and full-time education and training.