Ehh have we not had 3 of these plans already in the last 12 months?

After one year in power the government decides to tackle unemployment by threatening people to work in non existent jobs. I would like to be optimistic but the only details given in the article are some state funds will be used to magically create 100 thousand jobs. Where are the tax breaks for Small business and employees,what are the initiatives to encourage employment?

Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with the initiative to get people back to work, the fact of the matter is there are just no jobs out there. There are 26 people for every 1 vacancy in this country at the minute. The 350,000 people who lost their jobs (through no fault of their own let’s remember) are not now living the life of riley on the dole, refusing to work. These people want to work. The people who are refusing to work are a minority. Target them. It can’t be that hard for the department to know who is long-term and refusing to work. Stop putting all social welfare recipients into this category as is it false. It is very demoralising and unfair to be labelled like this. Some of these people have lost everything in the recession and now are being targeted by the Government. Start creating jobs for people to apply for. An initiative like this will not work until there are jobs.

Here we go again criminalise people out of work , the old divide and conquer routine , most people have never been out of work before and do not want to be on the dole and still not one of the criminals who caused this in prison .

I’m glad that there is going to be more training for the unemployed like myself, I just hope that they are not going to follow the same old methods and strategies. FAS are a complete joke altogether unless you want to learn mig welding or be a nail technician. Some of the Bluebrick and Sprinboard courses are good it’s just that they are not always accessible due to location. Looked at a cloud computing course that is on in Dublin but something intrigued me. Why is a course for the long term unemployed on for 2 evenings a week for 20 weeks? It’s not like I’ve any thing else on in my social calender! Why not do it over a month full time?

I am putting myself through college at the moment and will graduate in May. Well assuming that I can pay off €2500 I’ll graduate. I’ve nothing but hassle with the Government Depts who wanted me to become a full time student so I would come of their live register. I am a part time student and available for work and get nothing towards my education. St Andrews University in Scotland rang me the other day about doing a part time distance course with them. Long story short, if I could achieve certain conditions I could be doing a Masters next Sept. Of course I can’t afford it but the nice Scottish lady is seeing if there is some way that they could arrange financing. Her helpfulness was more than could be said for what I got over here from the Government.

Blablabla over and over and over.
Job creation and Irish government don’t go together. Stop talking thrash.
How you gonna create 350,000 or more jobs? Get people to carry the billions to the bond holders?

Training, training, training…for gods sake….if you are in a certain age you just dont want to be trained anymore. I am in my 40s have sooo many skills and training certs I can plaster my wall with. I JUST WANT A JOB> whatever job, as you get very humble with time and leave your expectations behind. Thank god I am not looking for a career but just a job to pay my bills, still no jobs around. And how can you – as Fiona said earlier – just put ALL welfare recepients in one pot?? And just keep saying its great and easy to live on the “dole” – what a fairy tale…. create jobs FIRST and THEN target THE PEOPLE WHO REALLY DO NOT WANT TO WORK – which i agree are now the minority!!!!

Maybe ask the bondholders and speculators to invest some of the billions we’re giving them to invest here, we can always tell them that if it doesn’t work out we’ll give them back their initial investment….and more.

Very misleading headline, I thought the government had stepped down.

Breaking news: the esteemed economist Colm Mccarthy stated on rte this morning that Ireland had significant debts and monies raised by state sell offs could be used towards these debts.

They should target their own salarys,and expenses,before tackling dole issues.

TA DAH!!!…..another plan.

What we need in government are folks who know what it is like to search for a job and do an interview or even experience life on the dole. None of them have experience of any of that or even emigration or migration to secure a job. What I found from experience is sink or swim as if I was waiting for them to sort me I would be on the street.

They dress up all these schemes and initiatives and for what? To send people into unpaid internships to do jobs that they would have earned 30k for back in the day!
It’s like their getting rid of FÁS….eh, they changed the name of Opal Fruits back in the day, I still recognised them despite their overhaul!

Another backwards move, the most obvious thing is to get the jobs created then make sure people take up them positions not penalize people for been unable to find work.
99% of the unemployed are there because of the disastrous economic policies of government and not by choice, I’m sure if work was widely available there would be a stampede to get off the dole and back into what most people want – meaningful employment.
But by taking the backwards approach they can cut peoples benefit for the most rudimentary issues.
Say a person is offered a job on mop duty in peep show booths, they say no f***ing way they are stripped of the only means of survival they have. :P

It’s a good scheme but done arseways – create jobs and then penalize.

It is very troubling to see Ireland in this mess. A few years ago Ireland was doing so well and now it is crippled financially. Is there any way out of this mess without having everybody on the dole. Someone must have an answer or at least a better way than being controlled by an outside party.

But many people who do avail of community employment schemes are in reality penalised financially for taking up a scheme and coming of jobseekers benefit/assistance. People on community employment/tus schemes are liable for PAYE/PRSI, not USC. This means that some people may have a single persons tax free allowance yet have an unmarried dependent/children on their CE/TUS payment so are liable for PAYE/PRSI. They can take home less for working on a CE scheme than by claiming jobseekers benefit/assistance. I think this needs to be addressed so that no-one who takes up a scheme should be worse off than on jobseekers assistance. You are officially ‘working’ on a ‘scheme’, and off the live register. But in reality people are still unemployed and seeking ‘real’ work. People on schemes work 19.5hours per week, are liable for PAYE/PRSI but for some reason are not entitled to benefits other workers are such as Family Income Supplement for example….CE schemes aren’t recognised as ‘work’ for this supplement to help families on low incomes. Agree, people of a certain age want REAL JOBS, NOT SCHEMES. People have mortgages, families and children of their own to put through college…….the only way to sustain this is to have a real paying job.

how do i get on this scheme where do i apply