Fine Gael has unveiled proposals to reduce by one-third the number of under-25s on the Live Register in the coming year.
The party's Hope for a Lost Generationpolicy document sets out plans to take 30,000 young people off the dole through a combination of "workshare" jobs, national internship programmes, second-chance education schemes and an expanded community employment scheme.
The party’s enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar told a news conference in Dublin that there were 85,900 people under the age of 25 who were signing on for unemployment payments. “One-third of all young males are now signing-on,” he said.
“If we don’t deal with youth unemployment, the social consequences of it are catastrophic both in terms of emigration, the possibility of increased crime, communities falling apart and essentially people leaving the workforce at a very early stage with no skills.”
He said Fine Gael was advocating a “flexicurity” welfare system, along the lines of most countries in northern Europe. “It’s a very different model and one that we want to move towards progressively over a period of time.”
Under the workshare scheme, redundancies would be avoided by having more people working part-time. “This can particularly work in industries where there is a cyclical downturn,” Mr Varadkar said.
Party leader Enda Kenny said the perspective that Fine Gael have on next week’s Budget for next week “very different” from that of Fianna Fáil. “The focus from Cabinet appears to be purely on the figure of €4 billion and how to arrive at that, from whatever sources."
Fine Gael had “a broader perspective entirely” which was about “shortening dole queues and getting people back to work”, he said.
“We reckon by these proposals here that we can reduce by over one-third the number of unemployed under-25s through a combination of 13,000 graduate internship places, 10,000 second chance education opportunities, 5,000 extra Community Employment Scheme places and 10,000 jobs created through a Government Workshare scheme.”
His party took the view that out of the €5 billion that was being paid out in unemployment benefit, “significant amounts” could be channelled into the creation of jobs for young people.
“We’ll meet the challenge of creating placements for them and job opportunities and were a young person under 25 not willing to accept that, then we would cut the amount of unemployment assistance paid to them after six months – only if they refused to accept an opportunity that’s practicable and workable and made available to them.”
Spokesman on small business and labour affairs Damien English said young people cannot wait for four or five years until the economy recovers. “They need to find a solution now."
He said there were approximately 700 apprentices who were “stuck” and could not progress in their training. “We’re going to give a mandate to the Office of Public Works and to the county councils and other authorities to give these people the ‘on the job’ experience they need to be able to finish and complete their qualifications.”