Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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174. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the opportunities in terms of training or workplace support programmes available to persons drawing credits but not receiving a social welfare payment; the schemes open to such persons; and his plans to extend options for job training for this category of persons. [12340/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The key objective of activation policy and labour market initiatives is to offer assistance to those most in need of support in securing work and achieving financial self-sufficiency. Accordingly the employment services and schemes provided by the Department are focused in the first instance on the cohort of people who are unemployed and in receipt of a qualifying social welfare payment.

At the same time and under certain circumstances, other groups can access training opportunities. Unemployed persons not in receipt of payments may be eligible to avail of up-skilling opportunities, for example through ETB (formerly FÁS) training for unemployed people, or, if they have been signing for six months or more, through the Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme (VTOS). In these cases, such participants do not receive a training allowance but may receive travel and lunch allowances from the ETB. Persons signing on for credits for 12 months or longer over the previous 18 months are also entitled to participate on Momentum provided that they have been actively seeking work, however they will not receive any payment.

More generally, a range of services are available to persons who are unemployed but not in receipt of a social welfare payment. For example employment services, such as advice on job-search activities and the use of online job search tools, are available to people if they register with the Department’s employment services offices, regardless of their social welfare status.

In short, the Government is committed to supporting as many people as possible to participate more fully in employment and to become more self-sufficient by providing supports that address barriers they may encounter in finding and sustaining employment. There are no plans to make changes to these arrangements at present.