Fás is to provide an additional 50,000 places on training courses for people who have recently become unemployed, Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan said today.
The Tánaiste also said that measures designed to provide increased capacity for dealing with a rise in referrals from the Department of Social and Family Affairs (DSFA) and an increased number of people seeking work will be introduced.
These measures include direct referrals from the DSFA to local employment services anda redeployment of staff to help process referrals.
The State agency Fás is to provide an additional 51,000 places over the 27,000 previously planned in 2009 under its Bridging Foundation Training, Specific Skills Training and Traineeships Programmes.
These programmes all provide short-term training courses for people who have recently become unemployed.
The Tánaiste said that in addition an examination is underway to see how effective training offered by community training centres training and local Initiatives are in providing skills to early school leavers and the longer-term unemployed.
