Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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221. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will provide an update on the implementation of the Youth Guarantee, including information on the number of education, training and work experience places provided in 2014; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11751/15]

Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, 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.

However, the Government recognises that as the recovery takes hold, there is a need for additional measures to ensure that as many as possible of the jobs created are taken up by jobseekers and young jobseekers in particular. This is the rationale behind the Government's Pathways to Work strategy and the Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan.

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 Tus, or through the JobsPlus employment subsidy for private employment.

Overall, the Youth Guarantee provided nearly 25,000 places for 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.

Pathways to Work 2014 targets with respect to the Youth Guarantee have largely been achieved. Models for the engagement of young people through Intreo have been agreed and will form the basis of the national roll-out of the Youth Guarantee in 2015. Potential refinement of these models may be considered on the basis of outcomes and learning from the Ballymun Youth Guarantee Pilot Project. In addition it is expected the following targets in Pathways to Work 2015 will be met:

- The First Steps developmental internships programme for 1500 – 2000 young people was launched in February 2015. It aims to offer young people you are particularly distant from the labour market a work experience opportunity with sponsor employers.

- JobsPlus for Youth was also launched in February; it offers employers who recruit a young person under 25 years of age who was unemployed for four months or more a subsidy of up to €416 per month. The duration unemployed threshold for other age cohorts is 12 months.

- Allocate 1,000 places on the Tús scheme to young people.

- Introduce a pilot programme to support young unemployed people to take up opportunities under schemes such as Your First EURES Job.

- Ring-fence a minimum of 2,000 training places for under-25s by the Department of Education and Skills, under a follow-up to the Momentum programme.

- The Department of Jobs Enterprise and Innovation will make €2.5m available to young entrepreneurs via Micro finance Ireland and other business start-up schemes.

Youth Guarantee Progress YTD: End December 2014