Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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280. To ask the Minister for Social Protection his plans to address the issue of the long-term unemployed, of which there now are 100,000 persons; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16036/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Government’s primary strategy to tackle long-term 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, long term unemployment is falling. The long-term unemployment rate peaked at 9.5% in Q1 2012 before falling to 4.7% in Q1 2016. At the latter date, the long-term unemployed accounted for 56.1% of all those unemployed, down from almost 65% in early 2012. The number of long term unemployed in Q1 2016 was 100,600; this compares to 156,200 in Q1 2014.

Although the labour market situation is improving considerably as the recovery continues, the Government recognises the importance of a continued focus on measures to facilitate long-term unemployed people find and sustain employment. This is the rationale behind the Government’s Pathways to Work 2016-2020 strategy (published January 2016).

A range of measures were introduced under previous Pathways to Work strategies for long-term unemployed people. This included a structured process of engagement with long-term unemployed people being referred to the activation process (Group Engagement followed by regular one-to-one case officer contact); wage subsidies in JobsPlus; the roll-out of a payment-by-results contracted employment services in JobPath, to provide additional capacity in order to engage more systematically with long-term unemployed jobseekers; and reserved places for long-term unemployed jobseekers on a range of Further Education and Training (FET) and public employment programmes. A core focus of Pathways to Work 2016-2020 is on consolidating and improving the quality and consistency of reforms undertaken in previous strategies, with continued prioritisation of those long-term unemployed. I am satisfied these measures will continue to contribute to addressing long-term unemployment.