Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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14. To ask the Minister for Social Protection her views on the SYNDICAT Confederation of European Trade Unions' report, the Youth Guarantee in Europe, and the contents of the country-specific section examining this State, in particular; the changes she will make to the Youth Guarantee to ensure that it does not perpetuate the growing crisis of precarious work; her views on SIPTU's assessment that the quality of the type of contract offered to young persons under the Youth Guarantee is not satisfactory, as well as the remuneration received and that the frequent use of internships increases the risk of job displacement. [4908/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Government’s primary strategy to tackle youth unemployment is to create the environment for a strong economic recovery by promoting competitiveness and productivity. Economic recovery will underpin jobs growth and the availability of productive employment for young people. This strategy has been succeeding, with an increase of over 80,000 in employment over the last 2 years. This increase has not been in “precarious” or temporary jobs. While the proportion of Irish workers who are on temporary contracts rose slightly during the recession, reaching 10.5% in 2011, it has since fallen back to the pre-recession level of 9.5%, and remains significantly below the EU average of 14.4%.Within this framework, the Youth Guarantee sets a medium-term objective of ensuring that young people receive an offer of employment within four months of becoming unemployed. The main plank of the guarantee is assistance to young people in finding and securing sustainable jobs. For those who do not find employment, additional offers are provided for. Most such offers (over 70%) are in further education or training. Others are in community-based employment programmes such as CE, Gateway and Tús, or through the JobsPlus employment subsidy for private employment. Both the job-search assistance, and the range of programmes I have just mentioned, are the subject of favourable comment by SIPTU in the report quoted by the Deputy, which is largely positive about Ireland’s implementation of the Youth Guarantee.

None of these programmes involve offers of employment on “unsatisfactory” contracts. Finally, the Youth Developmental Internship, First Steps, is an additional measure to provide youth with work experience. This will offer young jobseekers aged between 18 and 25 the opportunity to gain valuable work experience and training with the help of dedicated assistance from Department of Social Protection case officers. The target is to provide up to 1,500 work experience placements of six or nine months’ duration for young jobseekers during 2015.

Yesterday, I launched a call seeking expressions of interest from organisations right across the private, public, voluntary and community sectors inviting them to participate as a sponsor in the First Steps programme. The objective is to provide participants with an opportunity to learn and develop basic work and social skills while on a placement in a real work situation in organisations in the private, public, voluntary and community sectors.

Each placement will last for six or nine months during which time the participants will spend four days per week with a host employer and will be expected to use the fifth day of each week to undertake other activities related to job-search.

Youth unemployment here has fallen from a crisis peak of 31% to about 23% now, and the number of young people who are long-term unemployed has fallen from 36,000 to circa 17,000.