Substantial increase in youth training allowance rate required

THE recent article by Niall Murray, under the heading ‘Concern at youth jobless figures’, is depressing news for many of our young people. 

This report covered the concerns of the National Youth Council of Ireland about the unemployment situation, with figures at the end of June showing that almost 19,000 young people were on the Live Register for one year or more.

I fully support the Youth Council in its call on the Government to restore the adult rate of €188 a week for all young people in education, training, and work experience programmes. The training allowance for young people on a range of schemes has been cut to €160 a week by the current and previous governments. How nasty. There are no cuts, however, in the salaries and pensions paid to our parliamentarians. To help young people, Government must increase substantially this training allowance in the budget.