William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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692. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the steps his Department is taking to increase participation in the Activation and Family Support Programme, the Community Employment Programme, and other training and reskilling initiatives; the number of persons who have been assisted into employment to date in 2025; the way in which his Department is targeting supports to long-term unemployed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [62227/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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My Department offers a range of employment schemes and other supports to encourage long-term unemployed people to return to work, while also assisting communities across the country in the provision of vital services.

Community Employment (CE) and Tús are employment activation measures designed to provide eligible long-term unemployed people and other disadvantaged persons with an opportunity to engage in useful work within their communities on a temporary, fixed term basis. A number of changes have been introduced in recent times to support CE sponsors in their recruitment and retention of participants, including:

• A provision to allow CE participants who reach 60 years of age to remain in CE until they reach state pension age.
• Some flexibility granted to CE sponsors to retain existing participants for extended periods in cases where a replacement can’t be recruited immediately.
• Changes to eligibility criteria extending CE eligibility to the adult dependents of those in receipt of Jobseeker’s Allowance.
• A new pilot scheme to extend CE eligibility to those over 50 years of age in receipt of credits or a combination of credits and Jobseeker’s Benefit.

As at the end of October 2025, there were 9,564 participants and 1,217 supervisors on CE employed in 805 CE sponsoring organisations. This represents an increase of around 200 over the past 12 months. Government investment in CE will amount to nearly €370 million in 2025.

There are approximately 4,500 jobseekers currently participating in Tús, including just over 1,230 covered by the Temporary Protection Directive for Ukrainian citizens.

Furthermore, the Department's Activation and Family Support Programme continues to provide funding to assist local organisations and agencies implement training and education initiatives to address the needs of recipients of welfare payments and their families who are distant from the labour market. The programme is demand led and is designed to fund once off projects in response to local customer needs, as identified by local organisations.

My Department is committed to supporting jobseekers to obtain sustainable employment. Intreo Employment Services (ES) provide nationwide support to jobseekers through a structured and mandatory engagement process that offers tailored, individualised employment support. In 2025, to the end of October, Intreo ES provided over 202,700 appointments to jobseekers with over 100,100 referrals made to a variety of interventions such as job vacancies, further education and training options and employment support schemes. Data on progression to employment is not currently readily available.

Jobseekers on the live register engage with Intreo in the first 12 months and are then referred firstly to the Intreo Partner National Employment Service (NES) and after 24 months, to the Intreo Partner Local Area Employment Service (LAES), which is designed to engage with those with greater barriers to the labour market. Therefore, the jobseeker is referred to the most appropriate service at each point in time on their jobseeking journey.

I trust this clarifies matters for the Deputy