The Government Employment Action Plan, which has now begun "in earnest", aims to reduce unemployment from 9 per cent to 7 per cent over 18 months, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment has said.
The plan imposes time limits on unemployed people within which they must avail of State support schemes. It comes under Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs regulations and has the ultimate sanction of withdrawing social welfare payments.
Ms Harney said yesterday the State had a wider responsibility to the unemployed than "merely paying a dole cheque".
"This new plan is about opportunity, it is not about threats," she said. But if someone refused the aids on offer, taxpayers were not obliged to pay people the money they were currently being paid.
She said the plan would change attitudes in society where frustration might arise from someone taking a job but seeing other people turning down reasonable offers.
The plan provides for "systematic engagement" with under-25s "at that point where they cross the six-month threshold, with a view to offering them a job or other employability support".
Ms Harney said they would have to avail of a job, work experience, FAS training or counselling. About 400 under-25s a week entered the six-month category and would be interviewed by the FAS team of placement officers.
"I believe that it is going to provide huge opportunities for young people in our society," she said. For those over 25 years, the threshold is 12 months, but this aspect of the plan will be phased in, Ms Harney said.
It was too early to say how many people would lose social welfare payments, she added, but the Department would have an idea of how the plan was working after a month or six weeks.
She was hopeful the thresholds could be reduced to four months for under-25s and eight-months for over-25s in time.
As part of the plan, 7,500 places had been set aside in FAS training programmes and employment schemes for unemployed people aged 18 to 25.
Although a national minimum wage would be introduced in April 2000, many employers in key areas of the country were offering competitive wage rates but were finding it difficult to get staff, she added. FAS training programmes were also offering competitive rates, she added.
According to a spokeswoman for the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs, a leaflet will be sent to everybody on the live register next week detailing the employment supports on offer and information contacts.
The Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed yesterday questioned the resources being put into the plan, saying the Minister should explain how an offer could be made to 30,000 young people with a pool of 7,500 training places.
Mr Barrie McLatchie, INOU national chairman, said young people in communities with mass unemployment had already been failed by the education system and the new programme should not be "a conveyor belt".