Training the long-term unemployed taking centre stage

With a shortage of key skills threatening to derail plans to ramp up Ireland’s housing output, initiatives to tackle long-term unemployment are taking centre stage, writes Kyran Fitzgerald

No discredit to Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe but this, his first proper budget looks set to be quickly forgotten.

As usual, the critics have piled in. One did hit the mark in describing it as the ‘cup of coffee’ budget, an allusion to the rather modest social welfare increases and tax cuts doled out, just enough for a large weekly latte.