RECENT FIGURES FOR the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) show that 21% of people in receipt of the payment are aged under 25 years.  

Out of the 217,142 people in receipt of the PUP for the week ending 3 October, 45,461 were under 25 years of age. This represents one in five payments. 

The deputy director of the National Youth Council of Ireland (NCYI), James Dooley, said the pandemic has “hit the employment prospects of young people hard”. 

The NCYI is a group which advocates for the interests of young people in Ireland. 

“We are calling on the government to either restore all those who lost their job as a result of the pandemic to the highest rates or alternatively deliver a massive injection of funds in education, training and access to apprenticeships in Budget 2021 to counteract the impact of the pandemic on the employment and future career prospects of young people,” Dooley said. 

He added that young people are “facing into a grim period” as the “traditional option of emigration” is mostly off the cards due to the pandemic. 

“It is vital that we provide the young people who lost their jobs in March – and who are unlikely to return to those old positions – opportunities and supports to enhance their skills, retrain and look at new and alternative career options,” he said. 

The Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys has previously said that it would not be fair to increase or restore the PUP for one cohort of workers and not others who have also lost their jobs.

Humphreys said the scheme would be reviewed as part of the Budget next week.

The number of under 25s in receipt of each bracket of the PUP was outlined in a Parliamentary Question asked by Labour TD Ged Nash earlier this week.

The figures show those in receipt of the payment for the week ending 3 October: 

• €203 per week – 48,794 people receiving in total with 14,314 aged under 25
• €250 per week – 38,893 people receiving in total with 11,766 under 25 
• €300 per week – 129,455 people receiving in total with 19,381 under 25 

These three bands of the payment came into effect on 17 September.

The current payment level is determined by the amount of money the person earned before the pandemic.  

The number of people claiming the payment rose by 19,000 in the week after Dublin moved to Level 3 restrictions.

The latest figures for the PUP released on Monday show that 205,593 people received the payment this week.