EMPLOYMENT:LABOUR WOULD replace Fás, the national training and employment authority, with a national employment service, its education spokesman Ruairí Quinn has said.
Mr Quinn and social protection spokeswoman Róisin Shortall launched Labour's Plan for Jobseekersat the party's election headquarters in Dublin yesterday.
Under the plan, the new agency would integrate employment services for jobseekers, previously carried out by Fás, with the delivery of social protection benefits.
The new agency would also provide a one-stop shop for people seeking to establish their benefit entitlements; looking for a job; and seeking advice about training.
The document also proposes a graduate and apprentice work placement scheme called Bridge the Gap. This would be web-based and connect 30,000 graduates and apprentices with employers offering six-month internships. Jobseeker’s allowance and €50 working allowance would be paid.
The Earn and Learn scheme would enable people on “short time” to combine shorter hours with training or education.
Labour wants a reduced qualifying period of three months for the Back to Education and Back to Work Enterprise Allowance schemes to make it easier for people to come off the dole and into education. A tax-back scheme would be open to people not eligible for other means-tested supports who could claim up to two years of income tax back to fund full-time study.
A jobs fund would also finance an 18-month PRSI “holiday” for employers who take on employees who have been on the Live Register for six months or more.
Ms Shortall said the aim was “to ensure that people spend as short a time as possible on welfare and that there is progression into training, upskilling and, ideally, moving on to job opportunities”.
Mr Quinn said the situation was “catastrophic”. “This is without parallel in the history of this State,” he said. “There has to be a dramatic and coherent response.”
Ms Shortall said under the plan people would go to the social welfare office to sign on and other services would also be available in the same office.
