Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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706. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the labour market activation measures and schemes by her Department that are being deployed to reduce long-term unemployment, in tabular form; the number of persons in each such scheme; the funding provided in 2016 and 2017; and the budget allocation for 2018. [54128/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, 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 supports 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 long-term unemployment.

For example, the most recent data show that the rate of long-term unemployment in Ireland has fallen from a peak of 9.5% in 2012 to 3.1%, Q2 2017.

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

Policy continues to focus on support for the long-term unemployed. For example, the Pathways to Work 2016-2020 strategy prioritises long-term unemployed people – most notably through the roll-out of JobPath to engage more systematically with this group; through targeted wage subsidies under JobsPlus; and through reserved places for long-term unemployed jobseekers on employment and training programmes.

The out-turn for 2016 and the budget allocations for 2017 and 2018 for the main programmes impacting on the long-term unemployed, provided by the Department of Employment and Social Affairs, is given in Table 1. While not all participants in these programmes are necessarily long-termunemployed prior to taking up places, this is the case for the vast majority of participants on Community Employment, Tús, Gateway, and JobsPlus, and for a significant proportion of the participants on the remaining schemes.

Table 1 Activation Measure Funding.

The number of activation places on these programmes in 2016 and 2017 is given in Table 2:

Table 2