Written answers

Wednesday, 20 April 2016

Department of Social Protection

Youth Unemployment Measures

Photo of Bernard DurkanBernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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86. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the extent to which her Department continues to provide youth unemployment alleviation measures; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7719/16]

Photo of Joan BurtonJoan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Government’s primary strategy to tackle youth unemployment is through policies to create the environment for a strong economic recovery by promoting competitiveness and productivity. Reflecting the impact of government policy, and the overall improvement in the labour market, youth unemployment continues to fall with a rate of 19.0% in March 2016 (as estimated by CSO, compared to 21.5% in March 2015 and with a peak of over 31% in 2012).

However, the Government recognises that as the recovery continues, there is a need for additional measures to ensure that as many as possible of the jobs created are taken up by unemployed jobseekers and, in accordance with the EU Council recommendation for a Youth Guarantee by young jobseekers in particular. This is the rationale behind the Government’s Pathways to Work 2016-2020 strategy and the Youth Guarantee plan.

As under services such as Intreo, Youthreach, VTOS, PLC programmes, and JobBridge, Ireland already had many of the recommended component parts of a Youth Guarantee, the main approach in Ireland is to prioritise access to these existing supports for young people, who become unemployed, with the objective of ensuring that they have an opportunity for employment, further education or work experience within the recommended period of four months as per the EU council recommendation.

The key objective is to help newly unemployed young people find and secure sustainable jobs. In this regard there is monthly engagement with all young people by case officers to discuss and achieve personal progression plans. For those who do not find employment through the process just described, additional offers are provided for, both through existing schemes and through youth-specific measures. Most such offers (over 70%) are in existing further education or training programmes. Others are in existing community-based employment programmes such as CE, Gateway and Tús. Overall, over 19,100 opportunities were taken up on the relevant programmes in 2015.

Pathways to Work 2016-2020continues to prioritise these measures for the young unemployed and additionally commits to: increasing the share of workplace-based interventions for youth unemployed; ensuring that monthly engagement, at a minimum, is consistently applied and maintained; restructuring the First Steps programme; and implementing the Defence Forces Skills for Life programme.

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