Yearly Archives: 2014

90324032Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton

 

Stephen Rogers reports in today’s Irish Examiner that less than 10% of the Government’s target number of positions on the Gateway initiative have been filled.

With just 270 positions filled on its Gateway job activation programme, the Government has had to change the criteria for access to the scheme to try to attract more participants.

Under the terms of the Gateway initiative, dole claimants who have been on the Live Register for more than two years are paid an extra €20 per week on top of their jobseeker’s allowance to work for local authorities. An average of 19.5 hours per week is on offer in areas including village enhancement schemes; landscaping; tourism ambassadors; animal control; and libraries, and each placement lasts for 22 months.

The Government set a target of 3,000 positions to be filled by the end of the year. Yet by the end of this week only 270 had been taken up since the scheme was introduced more than 18 months ago.

Poor uptake prompts Gateway reform (Stephen Rogers, Irish Examiner)

Previously: Withholding The Dole

Forced Labour

Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland

fleg

Mark Carruthers was joined by Billy Hutchinson (PUP), Alasdair McDonnell (SDLP) and Mike Nesbitt (UUP) on yesterday’s Sunday Politics for a discussion about flegs.

Billy Hutchinson, the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party repeated the claim he made on Friday that he is not a loyalist leader.

As to who put up the flegs, he said “it was Protestants who put them up.”

Previously: Any Fenians Will Do

Not On My Pole

sunday2

sunday1

Causes of deaths of babies apparently buried in a mass grave at Tuam Mother and Child home.

Entire list available below (see link).

Includes death from eczema.

Roll of stolen childhoods revealed in death records of 796 babies and children who were buried in mass grave in Tuam mother and baby home (Niamh O’Connor, Sunday World)

Marasmus?

(Sunday World)