Places on Community Employment schemes are to be cut by 5,000 next year, and most unemployed people under 25 will no longer be entitled to participate.
Hardest hit will be young lone parents, who make up 100 per cent of the schemes' participants in some areas.
Yesterday the Cabinet approved a series of measures proposed by the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, aimed at ensuring that the CE programme is focused more effectively on the long-term unemployed and disadvantaged communities. The cut in places will reduce the numbers on CE schemes to 32,500 in the year 2000.
As a result of the new measures, eligibility for schemes will be extended to widows, widowers and the spouses of long-term unemployed people. Younger unemployed people, including single mothers, will be redirected to mainstream training courses.
FAS will be asked to provide 800 extra training places for lone parents displaced by the new measures. It will also be expected to provide childcare facilities and training on a part-time basis where necessary to accommodate their special needs.
In an allied initiative, Ms Harney is to introduce a Social Economy Programme (SEP) this autumn which will "support imaginative, locally-based initiatives in disadvantaged communities". She said yesterday she would be inviting the social partners to join a national monitoring committee on the programme so they can help shape its operation and delivery.
The new SEP will cost £41 million a year and provide 2,700 jobs when it begins to operate in about three years. However, only £1 million extra will be required from the Exchequer, as the rest will come from the 5,000 reduction in CE placements.
The head of the unemployment policy unit at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mr Pat Nolan, said the SEP schemes could be more flexible in their approach than traditional CE schemes. "They will have to come up with a business plan, with which they will be offered assistance, and they will have to find some co-funding". The extra funding could come from the statutory, voluntary or private sector, he said.
The aim would be to encourage proposals which provided socially useful services that could become self-sustaining in the longer term.
Raising the eligible age of CE participants from 21 to 25 years will be accompanied by other measures to counteract the present situation, whereby many young unemployed people are constantly recycled through CE schemes.
For instance, the waiting period for people wishing to repeat a one-year CE scheme is to be increased from six months to a year. There will also be a cap of three years on "lifetime participation in CE" for individual unemployed people.
The Tanaiste said the changes were needed because of the drastic reductions in the number of people unemployed. "Given that unemployment is down to 5.8 per cent, and long-term unemployment stands at 2.6 per cent, we must ensure State supports are the most effective available."