Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has said those on unemployment benefits will face cuts in their social welfare payments if they do not avail of training or other schemes.
Mr Kenny said people who are able to work an in receipt of unemployment benefits will be offered opportunities either for training or involvement in work situations.
If they reject this, they will see a reduction of about €10 per week by 2015, he said.
He said the move was designed to “demonstrate that everybody can make a contribution here and there has to be a difference between those who work and those who do not work”.
Mr Kenny said the "best antidote to social welfare cuts is jobs". He said the decline in the state of the public finances means that “everybody, by implication, suffers".
He said the party would shield the most vulnerable from cuts. It would not reduce the old age contributory and non-contributory pensions or disabled, blind and carers allowances as “we need to protect those people”.
On health, Mr Kenny refused to say if his party would close more hospital wards if elected, when asked in an interview on RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
He said his party would change the system in three phases; by eliminating waiting lists, change hospitals seeing patients as a resource and moving on to universal health insurance. “Where you eliminate the two-tier system, eliminate the private hospitals on public grounds and let every body be treated the same,” he said.
However, Mr Kenny said he couldn’t “change the current structure overnight” and he “hoped” more wards would not have to close.
Mr Kenny also said he wanted to keep the current levels of public service pay. The only way to do this was by “downsizing the overall cost of the delivery of your public services and downsizing the numbers through voluntary redundancy”.
And he denied that the party’s plan to reduce the size of the public sector by 30,000 workers through voluntary redundancies would have a detrimental effect on public services.
Mr Kenny also refused to say whether the recent row with Labour would make potential negotiations to form a coalition government more difficult after the election.
The parties have clashed repeatedly in recent days over their taxation and fiscal plans.