Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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176. To ask the Minister for Social Protection her views on amending the criteria for eligibility for the back to education allowance to make eligible persons who have been out of work for a cumulative period of 180 days over the previous three years, as a means of removing an incentive for persons to stay on jobseeker's allowance and also to encourage more persons who are out of work to retrain and reskill to meet the needs of the modern economy [37104/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The back to education allowance (BTEA) programme is designed to support certain recipients of social welfare payments to pursue courses of education with the objective of improving their chances of accessing work. To qualify, a customer must satisfy a number of conditions such as, inter alia, being a certain age, in receipt of a prescribed social welfare payment for a specified time period, and pursuing a full-time course of study leading to a recognised qualification in a recognised college. A waiting period is considered necessary in the context of targeting scarce resources, to prevent exploitation of the scheme, and to meet the policy objectives with respect to activation. BTEA should not be seen as an alternative to student income supports provided by the Department of Education and Skills.

With respect to jobseekers, a customer may qualify for BTEA if they have been on a jobseeker’s payment for 78 days if they wish to pursue a second level option. This increases to 234 days if they wish to pursue a third level option. Periods on eligible social welfare payments that are not broken by more than twelve months can be combined in determining the required qualifying period for BTEA. Given the nature of BTEA, it is possible that the scheme can provide an incentive for customers to remain on a jobseekers payment to qualify. The risk of this occurring has been significantly reduced by improved case management of all new jobseekers and new selection processes for BTEA which were introduced during 2014. These include enhanced case officer interventions, linking applications to identified skill shortages in the economy, and the assessment of a customer’s current skills and education attainment.

I have no proposals to make further changes to the BTEA eligibility criteria at this time.