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LOCAL MEP WELCOMES EU €1BN VOTE ON JOBS FOR YOUTH

8 May 2015 No Comments by The Northern Standard

By PATSY McARDLE

LOCAL Sinn Féin MEP for the Midlands North West, Matt Carthy, has welcomed a vote in the European Parliament during the week to speed up the delivery of Youth Employment Initiative funds to member states, including Ireland, which will result in almost €1 billion becoming accessible in the coming year.

He declared this move puts the onus on the Irish government to implement a comprehensive jobs, education and a training plan to meet its ‘Youth Guarantee’ commitments.

The Carrickmacross-based MEP said:“Sinn Féin has been outspoken in criticising the inadequacy of the Youth Employment Initiative to deal with the scale of the youth unemployment crisis in the EU.

“In 2012, the International Labour Organisation estimated that the implementation of an effective Youth Guarantee in Europe would require new spending of €21 billion. Yet the Commission has only committed to €6 billion for the Youth Employment Initiative.

“While Sinn Féin will continue to call for stronger commitments from the European Commission, I welcome the speeding up of the delivery of these funds. The pre-financing element of the funds will now rise from 1% of the total funds to 30 per cent. This means that of the €68 million in Youth Employment Initiative-specific funds reserved for this state, the amount that will become available for the Irish Government to claim in the coming year will rise to more than €20 million.

“As a result of the vote we expect this to come into force in June. At least half of the pre-financing amount must be used within the first year.

“With the Irish youth unemployment rate at 21 per cent, still above the EU average, the onus is on the Government to now take real action to address youth unemployment. There are over 60,000 fewer people aged between 20 and 34 in employment now than when Fine Gael and Labour came into office and the ‘in-employment’ figures for this age group fell by 14,000 in 2014 alone.

“Meanwhile, over 165,000 young Irish people have left in the past six ….

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