Dublin MEP Emer Costello held a public seminar recently to discuss the selection of Ballymun in north Dublin as a European pilot project for the European Youth Guarantee (EYG) scheme.
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Dublin MEP Emer Costello held a public seminar recently to discuss the selection of Ballymun in north Dublin as a European pilot project for the European Youth Guarantee (EYG) scheme.
The EYG is a European-wide initiative from the Party of European Socialists (PES) that targets areas in Europe with a higher than 25 per cent youth unemployment rate.
The scheme is scheduled to commence next year and will receive €6bn in funding from the EU.
Intended to “ensure that every young person in Europe is offered a job, further education or work-focused training at the latest four months after leaving education or after becoming unemployed,” according to its mission statement, the ultimate goal of the scheme is to half unemployment among 15-24-year-olds in Europe by 2020.
Ballymun went under consideration for the project in October last, when Costello visited the Ballymun Jobs Centre, followed by a visit from the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee.
Costello commented on the large number of young people in Dublin who are out of work – currently registered at over 17,000 – and called for up to a third of the estimated €150m earmarked for the guarantee pilot to go to the greater Dublin area.
She added that she felt the pilot project would “provide a major boost to the Ballymun Regeneration Project, ensuring a degree of social regeneration will take place.”
The Dublin MEP organised the seminar as a roundtable discussion where grassroots groups and individuals could learn about and contribute to the drawing up of plans for the pilot scheme in Ballymun.
Guests at the seminar included Mick Creedon, manager of the Ballymun Job Centre; James Doorley, deputy director of the National Youth Council of Ireland; Ita Mangan, a barrister with specialties in welfare law and citizen rights; Siptu researcher Loraine Mulligan; Mary P Murphy, lecturer in Irish politics at NUI Maynooth; Brid O’Brien, INOU head of policy and media; Lidia Salvatore, research officer with the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions; and David Treacy, education officer with the City of Dublin Education and Training Board.
