This week the Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton took questions in the Dáil where we debated last week’s EU-wide agreement for a youth guarantee. This guarantee is due to be formally approved by the European Council in the coming months.

The guarantee sets out that each member state shall ensure that young people should receive either an offer of continued education, work placement or an offer of an apprenticeship within 4 months of being unemployed.

I have received a lot of correspondence from people who wanted to participate in work placement or education programmes but were unable to do so because they were not out of work long enough. I took this opportunity to raise the issue with the Minister. Numerous programmes in Ireland including the ‘Back to Education Allowance’ which currently requires prospective applicants to be unemployed for a period of 9 months, are keeping unemployed people from getting further training or education. I asked the Minister if the new guarantee would lower the length of time people would have to be unemployed before they could avail of the support.

I will be following my oral question with a written parliamentary question.

Watch the debate here.