The waiting period for the unemployed to qualify for the back-to-education scheme would be cut from 12 to three months by Labour in power, the party’s social protection spokeswoman Roisin Shortall said. Under current arrange- ments an unemployed person in most cases had to wait a year to qualify for third-level education under the scheme, she said.
Ms Shortall told delegates at the party’s national conference that the rule was “absolutely ludicrous. It’s an incentive to remain long- term unemployed until the eligibility criteria are fulfilled. It actually encourages welfare dependence rather than preventing it”.
She said: “One in three of our young men is unemployed, one in six of our young women. The focus needed to be on providing them with greater opportunities. The overriding criteria that should be applied to the scheme is – would another qualification help that person’s job prospects, yet that commonsense approach is missing currently.”