Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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171. To ask the Minister for Social Protection his views on youth unemployment and long-term unemployment; if his Department will continue to address this; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29186/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Government’s primary strategy to tackle long-term unemployment and youth unemployment is to create the environment for a strong economic recovery through effective policies. In doing so it is hoped to promote competitiveness and productivity.

Reflecting the impact of government policy, and the overall improvement in the labour market, both long term unemployment and youth unemployment continue to fall.

The long-term unemployment rate peaked at 9.5% in Q1 2012 before falling to 4.4% in Q2 2016. At the latter date, the long-term unemployed accounted for 51.1% of all those unemployed, down from almost 65% in early 2012. The number of long term unemployed in Q2 2016 was 95,900; this compares to 204,300 in Q1 2012.

Youth unemployment continues to fall with a rate of 15.9% (32,400) in September 2016 (as estimated by CSO), compared to 17.0% (35,200) in August 2016 and a peak of over 31.1% (70,500) in 2012.

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 and young unemployed people find and sustain employment. This is the rationale behind the Government’s Pathways to Work 2016-2020 strategy (published January 2016) and the Youth Guarantee plan (published January 2014).

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.

The key objective of Ireland’s policy response to the EU Recommendation on a Youth Guarantee is to help newly unemployed young people find and secure sustainable jobs. In this regard there is monthly engagement by case officers with young people to assist them to prepare, review and, if appropriate, revise personal progression plans. Where young people do not find work relatively quickly, additional supports may be offered, both through reserved places on existing employment and training 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 (see Table 1 attached to this reply).

Pathways to Work 2016-2020 continues to prioritise these measures for the young unemployed and further commits to a number of additional measures. These include 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.

I am confident these measures, and continuing economic recovery, will support further reductions in long term unemployment and youth unemployment and add to the substantial improvements that have already been seen over the last few years.