Hi °C | Lo °C Businesses in the tourism and retail sectors will be able to get a subsidy from the Government for hiring seasonal workers – when they take someone off the dole queue.
Employers will get a cash refund every month for up to two years of €1 in every €4 of the cost of taking on someone who is long-term unemployed.
The plan is intended to encourage employers to take on extra staff, while also getting the long-term unemployed back to work.
The detail of the new 'Jobs Plus' scheme be outlined in the Action Plan for Jobs, is to be launched today by Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Jobs Minister Richard Bruton.
The move is aimed at creating new jobs but also boosting the chances of the long-term unemployed to get back to work.
But there will be safeguards in place to ensure employers are not just sacking an existing worker to avail of the subsidy with a new employee.
The refund will be paid over two years, but the payment will be front-loaded in the first year, to make it more beneficial to employers.
But the employer doesn't have to keep the worker on for the two years and can just employ them for seasonal work or in short-term jobs.
This condition will be particularly attractive for the tourism and retail sector, which has busier parts of the year, during the peak seasons of summer and Christmas.
But the worker will get valuable experience and be back in the labour market.
Incentive
The level of subsidy will depend on how long the worker has been on the dole – with an added incentive for taking on those unemployed for more than two years.
The scheme will cover 23pc of the gross cost of hiring a staff member. The main criteria is that each worker hired will have to have been on the dole for more than a year.
At the moment, the long-term unemployed only take up one-eighth of the jobs arriving on the market.
The new plan will replace the existing schemes available for hiring extra workers, such as the Revenue Job Assist and the Employer Job (PRSI) Incentive Scheme, which have an extremely low take-up rate.
The Government is aiming to get away from tax relief based-schemes to help with the firm's immediate cashflow to get employers interested.
The refund will be paid by the Department of Social Protection and is intended to operate as simply as possible.
The Action Plan for Jobs will include a number of headline changes to the system, to be described as "disruptive reforms".
The second year of the plan will be more ambitious than the first year and will include measures on reducing the administrative burden for businesses and the accessing of finance.
Irish Independent
