THE Government has launched its new subsidy scheme encouraging employers to recruit people who are long term unemployed a month ahead of schedule.
Under the Jobstart scheme, which is to be administered by FAS, employers will receive £80 a week for recruiting someone who has been on the live register for at least three years.
The scheme, seen as an important part of the Government's plans to combat unemployment will run initially until the end of the year and will cost the exchequer £20 million. It will provide up to 5,000 places.
Besides the subsidy to employers, unemployed people taking jobs under the scheme will retain their rights to secondary social welfare benefits such as clothing allowances and cheap fuel.
A further 5,000 long term unemployed people will benefit from Workplace, which will enable them to obtain five weeks' work experience with a company. Under the Job start programme, however, employers will be expected to make a more long term commitment.
Many employers are expected to use the Workplace scheme to assess potential Job start recruits. If, after the five week work experience programme, they decide to take someone on permanently, an employer will not be able to use the new recruit to replace an existing employee.
This is one of a number of safeguards built into the scheme to prevent a recurrence of the type of abuse which occurred under the Employment Incentive Scheme of the 1980s.
The new scheme has been worked out with the approval of the social partners.
Launching the two schemes in Dublin yesterday, the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Mr Bruton, said it demonstrated the Government's commitment to meeting the special difficulties of the long term unemployed in re entering the jobs market.
Mr Paul Billings, chairman of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, welcomed. Mr Bruton's decision to include his own organisation in the bodies which would monitor the scheme. He said it would be a new experience to be walking around looking for a job "with an £80 a week discount".
Mr Peter Cassells, general secretary of the ICTU, said trade unionists and employers had to recognise that unemployment was the biggest threat to the social cohesion of the State. He particularly welcomed the safeguards to protect the long term unemployed from a small number of unscrupulous employers.
The director general of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, Mr John Dunne, said employers were also committed to combating unemployment. The scheme would help reduce the high additional costs involved in recruiting new staff. He described Job start as "very positive and imaginative".
He predicted that up to 36,000 net new jobs would be created in the private sector this year, compared with 42,000 in 1995. The economic boom was at last generating jobs, he said, and 180,000 extra jobs had been created since 1988. This represented an increase of 20 per cent in the workforce.