THE NATIONAL YOUTH Council of Ireland has called on the Government to invest €2.5 million in apprenticeships to help halve long-term youth unemployment by 2020.

New figures released to the NYCI show that there are currently 6,000 long term unemployed young people.

The youth council is calling for measures to tackle youth unemployment as part of a number of costed measures detailed in its Pre-Budget Submission launching today.

They said that at present, there are 16,000 young people on apprenticeship programmes. The youth council said that it needs increased investment in Budget 2020 to support more young jobseekers into an apprenticeship and a range of other employment and training measures to reduce long-term youth unemployment.

In its Pre Budget 2020 submission, it is calling for an overall investment of €14.9 million in education, training and  apprenticeships to halve long-term youth unemployment by the end of 2020.

James Doorley, National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) Deputy Director said: “Census 2016 indicates that our population aged 10-24 years will increase to over one million by 2025, so we need to invest in policies, services and supports to meet the needs of young people today, while preparing for demographic pressures in the coming years.”

“We welcome job growth in the Irish economy and the consistent trend of reduced youth unemployment. However we are concerned that the youth unemployment rate is still over 10% and that almost 6,000 young people  are long-term unemployed.

“We have costed a number of education, training and employment measures which, if implemented, could halve the number long term unemployed by the end of 2020.”

Among the measures proposed is an investment of €2.5m in an access to apprenticeship programme. 

Doorley said his group welcomes the growth in apprenticeships in the last number of years but the fact that just 2% of these people are women is of concern to the NYCI.

“We support the overall Government commitment to increase the number of new apprentices, but more needs to be done to open up apprenticeships to young women, young people with disabilities, ethnic minorities and young people who are economically and socially disadvantaged and those who have limited formal qualifications.

“At present only 2% of apprentices are young women and 2.8% have a disability. There is no data available on other categories such as young people who are socially and economically disadvantaged or those from a minority ethnic background.”