Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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179. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the total expenditure on the national implementation of the Youth Guarantee in 2014. [11263/15]

Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The objective of the Youth Guarantee is to ensure that young people receive a quality offer of assistance within four months of becoming unemployed. This objective is to be achieved over time by enhancing and prioritising the Intreo engagement with newly unemployed young people, and by maintaining and developing the current range of education, training and employment interventions for young people.

While the resources under the Youth Guarantee are targeted more towards those with the highest risk of becoming long-term unemployed, all young people signing on enter the engagement process (via Group Engagement sessions) within the first two weeks of signing on. Effectively, therefore, all persons under the age of 25 who become unemployed (the target group at whom policies developed under the Guarantee are aimed) are engaged with by the State's public employment services at an early stage of their period of unemployment.

The Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan provided for over 28,000 programme opportunities for unemployed young people in 2014. This figure excludes some 24,000 places provided for young people through PLC courses and apprenticeships. These PLC and apprenticeship places, together with the wide range of vocational third-level courses provided for the young, although not reserved for unemployed jobseekers, nevertheless contribute to the spirit of the guarantee.

Approximately 25,000 of these places had been taken up at the end of December 2014. The estimated full year costs for 28,000 places (excluding PLC and apprenticeships) is €336m. Full data on the actual spend to the end of 2014 is not yet available.