Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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152. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the funding that will be provided to deliver the 10,000 places for the work placement experience programme outlined in the Economic Recovery Plan 2021. [32267/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The July Jobs Stimulus set out the Government investment plan of €200m investment towards training, education, skill development, work placement schemes, recruitment subsidies and jobs search and assistance measures; these measures aim to help those who have lost their jobs find a new one, retrain or develop new skills, in particular for emerging growth sectors.

Included in this is provision for a funded work placement scheme to provide work experience for 10,000 jobseekers over two years, aged 18 - 65 years, where the job seeker has been unemployed for more than six months. Time spent on the pandemic unemployment payment (PUP) will be contribute towards eligibility. The programme will be open to all those who are job seeking with the particular aim of assisting those who have been disaffected by Covid-19 to pivot into new employment in new sectors through additional learning with new and relevant work experience. This work experience opportunity will provide important and valuable work and development opportunities to persons whose previous jobs are permanently lost due to COVID, as well as to those who were unemployed prior to COVID. The programme will support innovative learning and development opportunities for participants.

Under the July Jobs Stimulus, provision was made for €135m to fund the programme. These costs include an attractive weekly uplift to the usual welfare payments for participants.

This programme is included as one of the measures included under the Economic Recovery Plan, with some measures to be partially funded under an application to the Resilience and Recovery Facility to the EU. The funding application to the EU for this measure is €27m over the two years that the programme will run.

I will be bringing details of the programme and the associated funding provision to Government shortly for consideration and approval with a view to launching the programme shortly thereafter.