Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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75. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the way citizens signing for credited contributions with her Department could be further supported in acquiring skills and training opportunities in order to assist them to return to the workforce. [30822/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Given the scale of unemployment, the key objective of activation policy and labour market initiatives has been to offer assistance to those most in need of support in securing work and achieving financial self-sufficiency. Accordingly the employment services and schemes provided by the Department are focused in the first instance on the cohort of people who are unemployed and in receipt of a social welfare payment (either Jobseekers Allowance or Jobseekers Benefit). There are no plans to make changes to these arrangements at present.

Despite this focus, access to training and employment programmes is also open to other groups under certain circumstances. Thus, persons who have been signing for credits for three months (78 days) of the last six months are eligible to participate in the JobBridge programme. Persons signing on for credits for 12 months or longer are also entitled to participate on Momentum provided that they have been actively seeking work. Persons signing for six months or more are entitled to participate on VTOS courses subject to availability. In the case of VTOS courses, participants do not receive a training allowance but may receive travel and lunch allowances from the VEC.

More generally, a range of services are available to persons who are unemployed but not in receipt of a social welfare payment. For example employment services, such as advice on job-search activities and the use of online job search tools, are available to people if they register with the Department’s employment services offices, regardless of their social welfare status. Furthermore, unemployed persons not in receipt of payments may also be eligible to avail of up-skilling opportunities, for example through ETB (formerly FÁS) training for unemployed people, but are not eligible to receive a training allowance while undertaking the course. The Work Placement Programme is also open to persons not in receipt of a social welfare payment, although the participant will not receive a payment while on the programme.