Government launches new plan aimed at getting people back to work

The Government has launching a plan to get even more long-term unemployed back to work.

Currently 150,000 people on the Live Register have been without a job for over 12 months and are deemed to be long-tern unemployed.

A new 'Pathways to Work' plan up to 2020 aims to get 50,000 of these jobseekers work and to achieve an employment target of 2.2 million by the end of the decade.

Enda Kenny announced the new plan and said: “I want to see people independent in work, not dependent on welfare.

We believe that a job is the best route out of poverty, that work should pay, and that people shouldn’t be abandoned on the dole queues.

This Government of Fine Gael and Labour will break the endless cycle of poverty by getting people off welfare and into jobs.”