FINE GAEL proposals to reduce by one-third the number of under-25s on the Live Register in the coming year at a net cost of €245 million were launched by party leader Enda Kenny and employment spokesman Leo Varadkar yesterday.
Entitled Hope for a Lost Generation, the document outlines plans to take young people off the dole through a combination of “Workshare” jobs, national internship programmes, second-chance education schemes and expansion of the community employment schemes.
Mr Kenny told a news conference in Dublin: “The perspective that Fine Gael have on the budget for next week is actually very different from that of Fianna Fáil. The focus from Cabinet appears to be purely on the figure of €4 billion and how to arrive at that, from whatever sources.” Fine Gael had “a broader perspective entirely”.
Mr Kenny said this was about “shortening dole queues and getting people back to work.” He added: “We reckon by these proposals here that we can reduce by over one-third the number of unemployed under-25s through a combination of 13,000 graduate internship places, 10,000 second-chance education opportunities, 5,000 extra Community Employment Scheme places and 10,000 jobs created through a Government Workshare scheme.”
His party took the view that out of the €5 billion that was being paid out in unemployment benefit, “significant amounts” could be channelled into the creation of jobs for young people.
“We’ll meet the challenge of creating placements for them and job opportunities and were a young person under 25 not willing to accept that, then we would cut the amount of unemployment assistance paid to them after six months – only if they refused to accept an opportunity that’s practicable and workable and made available to them.”
Mr Varadkar said there were 85,900 persons under 25 who were signing on for unemployment payments. “One-third of all young males are now signing on,” he said.
He added: “If we don’t deal with youth unemployment, the social consequences of it are catastrophic both in terms of emigration, the possibility of increased crime, communities falling apart and essentially people leaving the workforce at a very early stage with no skills.”
Fine Gael was advocating a “flexicurity” welfare system, along the lines of most countries in northern Europe. “It’s a very different model and one that we want to move towards progressively over a period of time.” Under the workshare scheme, redundancies would be avoided by having more people working part-time. “This can particularly work in industries where there is a cyclical downturn,” Mr Varadkar said.
The youth wing of the Labour Party said yesterday that the Government should provide third-level institutions with funding to create part-time courses in areas it has targeted for future growth such as green energy.
In a pre-budget proposal entitled Tackling Youth Unemployment, Labour Youth proposes greater access to part-time education, broader graduate work placement schemes and expanding the number of places on Fás schemes to young people.
The group said there were now more than 100,000 young people neither working nor in education and that it was short-sighted for the Government not to have a long-term strategy for realising the potential of the State’s youth.