Fianna Fáil TD and Minister for Labour Affairs Dara Calleary has confirmed that eligibility criteria for the Government’s Work Placement Programme is being relaxed from December.
The programme is now aimed at providing nine months of work experience to 2,000 unemployed people, while they continue to maintain their social welfare entitlements.
The changes being introduced will improve the accessibility of the programme by amending its eligibility criteria for both the participants and the firms providing the placements.
Minister Calleary has worked with the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan, on the initiative since before it was introduced, and since its introduction in reviewing its effectiveness, and he said the changes will open the programme up to the maximum amount of people, giving them the opportunity to gain valuable work experience.
He confirmed the following criteria changes for participants: Recipients of most social welfare payments, including Job Seekers’ Allowance and Job Seekers’ Benefit, will now be eligible to apply.
Unemployed graduates who are not receiving a social welfare payment will also now be eligible to apply.
2009 graduates are now also eligible to apply. The period for which participants have to be in receipt of a social welfare payment in order to be eligible has been reduced from six months to three months.
The key changes relating to the eligibility criteria of firms providing placements are: The programme will be open to all sectors of the economy including the private, public, and now the community and voluntary sectors. The Department of Finance will issue a circular in the coming weeks on the operation of the programme in the public sector. The requirement for a firm to have at least 10 employees has been removed. Previously firms could only participate if they did not have redundancies in the previous six months. This constraint has been reduced to three months. However, the level of redundancies in the last three months was less than five per cent of the workforce, these firms will be eligible to participate. The duration of the work placement has been increased to a maximum of nine months.
Minister Calleary said: “This programme offers jobseekers and graduates the opportunity to gain valuable experience in their chosen field which is crucial in the current difficult economic environment. We need to get people out working, in training and in work placements like this where possible so that they can upskill, retrain and be ready for the upturn when it comes,” Minister Calleary concluded.
FÁS will continue to manage the Work Placement Programme and interested parties should revert to the FÁS website, www.fas.ie, for further information or their local FÁS Employment Services offices, or alternatively they can call the FÁS freephone number 1800 611 116.
