Additional €12m allocated to jobs fund

The Government is to allocate an additional €12m to the Labour Market Activation Fund, it was announced today.

The additional funding will support education and training programmes for at least 5,000 additional unemployed people and will bring the total number of participant places supported by the Fund to over 11,000 this year.

The Labour Market Activation Fund, launched by Tánaiste Mary Coughlan in March, is designed to assist in the creation of training and education provision by private, not-for-profit and public sector providers.

It is targeted at specific priority groups among the unemployed, namely the low skilled, and those formerly employed in declining sectors - construction, retail and manufacturing sectors – with particular emphasis on the under 35s and the long-term unemployed.

"I now intend to offer funding to at least 33 additional projects from a range of private and public training and education providers," the Tánaiste said today.

"This will bring to almost 60 the number of projects throughout the country being supported by the Labour Market Activation Fund in 2010."