Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Independent)
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294. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if his attention has been drawn to the concerns of persons with disabilities and mental health difficulties as a result of the withdrawal of the training allowance to participants on SOLAS funded training programmes; that participants have additional costs associated with taking part in training; that it is unacceptable that such persons should be worse off financially by participating in training; and if he will undertake to review the negative impact of this policy change. [29842/14]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The payment of an additional training allowance of €31.80 per week for the long term unemployed was introduced during a period of high employment levels as an incentive for the long term unemployed to participate in FÁS (now SOLAS) training courses. The payment of this allowance was later extended to those persons in receipt of social welfare disability payments to introduce equality of treatment for all people in training.

The payment was reduced from €31.80 per week to €20 per week as part of Budget 2011. In the present economic situation this incentive is no longer considered appropriate and as part of Budget 2014 it was decided to cease this payment for all SOLAS participants commencing courses after 1st January 2014. This change does not apply to persons who commenced a course prior to January 2014 who will continue to receive the long term unemployed bonus payment for the duration of their course. Travel supports continue to be available to SOLAS participants.

This is a decision taken in the context of the overall savings this Department had to find for 2014 and future years. It was taken against a difficult budgetary background and there is no scope to re-visit it.