Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 15 July 2014
96. Deputy Joan Collins asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if she will provide a breakdown of extra places for education and training, child care places for over sevens and job placement since 2011 and 4 July 2014 directed towards parents on lone parent family payments. [30737/14]
View answerThe one-parent family payment (OFP) scheme supports 76,249 recipients at an estimated cost of €863 million in 2014. The reforms to the OFP scheme are reducing on a phased basis, the maximum age limit of the youngest child at which an OFP recipient’s payment ceases to 7 years. The rationale for these reforms is to provide lone parents with improved access to a wide range of supports, which are designed to improve an individual’s prospects of securing employment. As set out in the table the Government is providing a range of activation measures in 2014. These include programmes first introduced by this Government such as JobBridge, which was extended to include OFP recipients in May 2012, JobsPlus and Momentum and older schemes such as Community Employment and TÚS where the Government has significantly increased the number of places available. In total 92,000 participants are expected to commence these programmes in 2014. An additional 35,000 are expected to participate on PLC courses.
Should a lone parent make the transition to a jobseeker’s scheme after their entitlement to OFP has expired then they will have improved access to many of these measures, including for the first time JobsPlus, Tús, Momentum and Gateway.
|
Programme |
Average participation 2014 |
|
Youthreach |
6,000 |
|
JobBridge |
7,700 |
|
Tus |
7,500 |
|
JobsPlus |
4,000 |
|
Momentum |
6,500 |
|
Back To Education Allowance |
18,500 |
|
BTWEA |
11,000 |
|
VTOS |
5,600 |
|
FAS/Solas |
10,300 |
|
International Work Experience and Training |
250 |
|
Gateway |
3,000 |
|
Community Employment |
25,300 |
|
Total |
105,650 |
|
PLCs |
35,000 |
Childcare is the responsibility of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (D/CYA). In Budget 2013, the after-school child care (ASCC) initiative was announced with the purpose to offset some of the childcare costs that are associated with availing of an employment opportunity. The scheme provides 800 subsidised childcare places and is open to both jobseekers and OFP recipients.
In Budget 2014, the re-focusing of the original ASCC budget enabled the introduction of the community employment (CE) childcare programme. This scheme was implemented in January and provides some 1,800 subsidised child care places to CE participants.
These two schemes build on the existing supports by the D/CYA, through which subsidised childcare is provided to approximately 35,000 children of low-income parents.
