Republic and Northern Ireland to access EU youth unemployment fund with OECD help

Officials in the Republic and Northern Ireland will work together to avail of EU funding to address youth unemployment, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said yesterday.

Speaking after the 16th meeting of the North South Ministerial Council in Dublin Castle yesterday, Mr Kenny said the general secretary of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) would be in Ireland in September to assist in producing a youth action plan for Ireland.

The €8 billion fund has been set up by the EU to tackle youth unemployment in countries with high levels. In Ireland, 30 per cent of under-25s are unemployed and the figure for Northern Ireland is 24 per cent. The money will be available from January next year.

Mr Kenny said the Republic and Northern Ireland would work on programmes, and officials and ministers from Northern Ireland would be invited to attend the meeting with the OECD in Dublin in September.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said the youth action plan would be brought forward on a collaborative basis because “irrespective of whether a young person is unemployed in Derry or Dungarvan or Belfast or any other city in Ireland, what they are looking at is an opportunity to get employment, education training or work experience”.

Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness described youth unemployment as “a terrible scourge”. Officials would work “very closely together” to access the EU fund, he said.

More than 20 Ministers attended the council yesterday to discuss the fund and other issues. These included the “success of the G8 summit” and the EU leadership, as well as tourism opportunities and diesel laundering.

They also discussed the plastic bag levy now in place in Northern Ireland, where shoppers are charged 5p per single-use carrier bag, regardless of whether it is plastic or paper.

Asked about the relationship between An Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) following criticisms of the northern police force raised at the Smithwick tribunal, Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson said the relationship “has probably never been better”.

Of course there would always be comments made, he said, but the organisations “are sufficiently professional to be able to retain their relationship”.

“We have received massive support from An Garda Síochána and intelligence had led to a number of attacks by dissidents being forestalled,” he said.

Mr McGuinness said the “good working relationship” between the forces had led to the thwarting of “countless attempts to drag us back to the past”.

“We are in their debt,” he said.