Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)
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81. To ask the Minister for Social Protection his plans to reduce long-term unemployment. [2754/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Government’s primary strategy to tackle unemployment – including long-term unemployment – is twofold. The Action Plan for Jobs support continuing strong economic recovery and employment growth. Policies and actions to ensure that unemployed people benefit from the increase in employment are set out in the strategy paper Pathways to Work 2016-2020.

To date, these policies have been effective in reducing both overall and long-term unemployment. The most recent data show that unemployment has fallen from a peak of 15% in 2012 to 7.2% in December 2016. The long-term unemployment rate peaked at 9.5% in Q1 2012 before falling to 4.2% in Q3 2016. At the latter date, the long-term unemployed accounted for 52% of all those unemployed, down from almost 65% in early 2012. The number of long term unemployed in Q3 2016 was 92,300; this compares to 204,300 in early 2012.

Long-term unemployment can be expected to fall further this year in line with the forecast fall in overall unemployment.

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