2026-02-26

8. Deputy John Paul O'Shea asked the Minister for Social Protection the number of individuals currently in receipt of jobseeker's allowance and jobseeker's benefit in Cork and Limerick, with particular focus on Intreo areas such as Mallow, Newmarket, Macroom and Kilmallock; the most recent trends in these figures over the past 12 months; the supports and activation measures in place locally, such as training, employment services and community programmes, to promote sustained employment in these areas; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14225/26]

I ask the Minister about the number of individuals currently receiving jobseeker's allowance and jobseeker's benefit in Cork and Limerick, with a particular focus on my area of Cork North-West, in Mallow, Macroom, Newmarket and Kilmallock, and, most importantly, the recent trends of these figures over the last 12 months. What are the supports and activation measures in place locally such as training, employment services, and community programmes to promote sustainable employment in the area? Will the Minister make a statement on the matter?

I thank Deputy O'Shea for his question. The total number of recipients of jobseeker's payments has remained generally steady over the last 12 months in both Cork and Limerick. In Cork, it varied between 11,700 and 13,700 over the year, while in Limerick, it varied between 5,200 and 6,000. At the end of January 2026, in Cork, there were approximately 12,100 recipients of jobseeker's payments. Figures were broadly the same in January 2025, with around 12,100 recipients. In Limerick, there were 5,800 recipients of jobseeker's payments in January 2026. In January 2025, there were 5,300 recipients of jobseeker's payments. Regarding the specific areas the Deputy mentioned, the CSO publishes breakdowns of the live register by office each month. In January 2026, there were approximately 2,700 people on the live register in the Mallow, Newmarket, Macroom, and Kilmallock areas. This is comparable to 2025, when there were also 2,700 people on the live register. I will arrange for detailed tables of recipient and live register numbers to be sent to the Deputy. The public employment service, Intreo's employer relations team, offers a wide range of locally based services to assist employers, including engaging directly to assist with recruitment activities, and by hosting local recruitment events that connect employers to jobseekers through a mix of in-person events and online webinars. During 2025, Intreo employer relations hosted 12 recruitment events and careers fairs in Charleville, Mallow, Millstreet and Fermoy, at which there were a wide range of supports on offer in further education, training, upskilling, work placements, programmes such as the work placement experience programme, community employment and Tús, to support people to obtain or retain employment.

I thank the Minister for those figures. They are partly along the lines that I thought there were, consistently around the 2,700 mark between all the areas. The challenge for us as a Government is to try to get those people back into the workforce and working with the activation officers. It will be important to see if we can work on those. The challenge that I see and the trend is that many young people end up in unemployment now. I hate to see that. I would like to see them getting involved in work placement programmes, further education and training, employment services, or community employment programmes such as Tús. Community employment is very important indeed. I thank those who work in the Intreo offices, trying to engage with people on jobseeker's benefit and jobseeker's allowance to try to get them back into the workforce. It is important and we need to continue those good efforts.

I thank the Deputy and join him in acknowledging the superb work being done by our Intreo teams across the country. We will have work and skills events around the country next week. I encourage every Deputy to help to promote those events and to attend the events to see how they work. We are more than happy to show them. We have already had a good discussion this morning about youth employment and the work we are doing with Intreo, and the tailored, individualised employment support that Intreo provides. As the Deputy knows, with the youth guarantee of the European Union, we are pledging to provide a good quality offer of employment, education or training to those under 30 within four months of them becoming unemployed. We are focused on delivering that. We are focused on identifying appropriate training opportunities for young people. I thank the Deputy and Senator Anne Rabbitte for their engagement with me around redesigning community employment, Tús and the rural social scheme, RSS, to ensure that they offer opportunities to people. As I said earlier, we are currently finalising a new draft of pathways to work. That will look at all the labour market challenges we face, because our biggest enemy is complacency, and we must ensure that our labour market and supports are relevant to the conditions in the market today.

I thank the Minister for his continued engagement on this matter. We all need to tackle youth unemployment quickly. It is good to see that, after four months of being on jobseeker's payments, there are significant activation measures from Intreo offices to assist those young people to try to get back to work. I am sure all the Deputies in the House are contacted through their offices or social media about advertising jobs available in the local area. There are plenty of jobs, but we need to work with Intreo staff and employers in the area to make sure that we get as many people back into the work force as possible. While the Minister is here, I want to mention the southern branch managers association executive being in contact with me about the Intreo offices run privately. I believe they have been in contact with the Minister's office about support for a pay agreement that he and his Department are working on. I encourage him to work with them to try to get that pay agreement over the line. Intreo offices are important to all of us, not just today but in the future too.

We will continue to work on activation. I am focused on targeted activation. It is important that we give people the opportunity to remain connected and qualified for the labour market. It is something I am very focused on doing, and I thank our Intreo colleagues. In relation to the branch office managers, as the Deputy knows, we have 55 social welfare branch offices at various locations, including 24 in the southern region, 11 in the northern region, 17 in the midlands and west region and three in the eastern region. We have received correspondence, and we are engaging with the branch manager representative groups in relation to a review of their remuneration arrangements. My officials are engaging around that. We will be engaging with the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and we will have further engagement with the Branch Managers Association in relation to those outcomes. Quite a number of Deputies have been in touch with me in recent days about this. We are very focused on it. I very much appreciate the fantastic work they do.