Just the job
Labour's policies to create 60,000 new training, education and internship places
Issued : Monday 6 April, 2009
Labour's policies to create 60,000 new training, education and internship places, in order to help people who are currently unemployed to develop their skills, and position themselves for new job opportunities.
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Summary
Ireland urgently needs to avoid our jobs crisis becoming a crisis of long-term unemployment. Ireland needs a set of strategies to cover those who have recent work experience, but limited qualifications, and those with qualifications, but little work experience. There is no 'one-size-fits-all' scheme that will meet the needs of everyone on the live register. Rather a number of different interventions are needed. Labour has proposed the following measures, to be funded from our €500 million Jobs Fund, as detailed in our Budget 2011 proposals.
- ‘Bridge the GAP' - a Graduate and Apprentice Work Placement Scheme for 30,000 recent graduates and apprentices. This scheme would provide a web-based brokerage service connects employers offering placements and prospective interns. Employers would sign up to accept new graduates or apprentices for 6 month placements in their organisation (public and private sector, as well as voluntary or community organisations). Participating interns would be paid at the single person's rate of Jobseeker's Allowance for the duration of the placement, plus a modest cost-of-work allowance.
- Tax back for full-time study: applying the principle of the Seed Capital Scheme for start-up businesses, a person would be entitled to claim back their income tax from their last two years of work in order to offset their loss of income while undertaking full-time study in an authorised institution.
- ‘Earn and Learn': this scheme would incentivise people on 'short time' to combine a shorter working week with training or education. This could be done through a broker (i.e. a local employment service, a local VEC or Institute of Technology), which would facilitate businesses in the provision of appropriate training for the remainder of the week. Participants in the scheme could be paid a pro-rata payment for days spent training.
- Labour will extend the Employer PRSI Incentive Scheme, and extend the exemption period to 18 months, to incentivise employers to employ people who have been on the live register for 6 months or more.
- Labour will make it easier for people to come off the dole and into education by reducing the qualifying period for the Back to Education and Back to Work Enterprise Allowance to three months, and allowing for greater access to postgraduate courses under the Back to Education Allowance during this exceptionally difficult time in the labour market.
- Labour will make literacy a national priority, incorporating literacy training into a wider variety of further education and training, where appropriate.
- Labour will create 'Skills Exchanges' to tap into the wealth of work experience of those currently unemployed. The hundreds of thousands of people currently on the dole are a vast reservoir of professional experience and skills. A 'Skills Exchange' within VEC colleges, Institutes of Technology or FAS training centres, would enable those availing of training in one field to use their previous professional experience to help train other people.
- Labour has earmarked just under 30,000 new places across the training and education system, which reflect the skills that our economy needs. As well as FAS, further education colleges, Institutes of Technology and universities are all publicly-funded institutions with the facilities and expertise to provide training, and will be required to be flexible and innovative in responding to our unemployment and skills crisis.
