Back to Education Allowance

21 Apr 2005

In response to Minister Brennan’s recent comments the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed would refute the Minister for Social and Family Affairs’s contention that people choose to take up unemployment payments in order to qualify for the Back to Education Allowance.

‘The Back to Education Allowance is an option for unemployed people to improve their qualifications and employment prospects that can have a long-term effect not only on themselves but also society in general as these graduates will become tax payers’, said Eric Conroy, General Secretary INOU. ‘The allowance is there to facilitate those most in need to get a 3rd level education and it works. It provides an opportunity to unemployed people to return to education and increase their employability and this in turn helps to break the poverty and unemployment cycle.’

The INOU has continuously lobbied for the qualifying period of the third level strand of the Back to Education Allowance be returned to 6 months. The reduction of the qualifying period from 15 months to 12 months in Budget 2005 was welcomed. However as the scale of youth unemployment is increasing it is vital that this support be available to unemployed people earlier.