The Work Placement Programme (discussed previously here) has undergone a number of revisions. For unemployed participants the following criteria have been amended:
• Recipients of most social welfare payments, including Job Seekers’ Allowance and Job Seekers’ Benefit, will now be eligible to apply. Unemployed graduates who are not receiving a social welfare payment will also now be eligible to apply.
• 2009 graduates are now also eligible to apply.
• The period, for which participants have to be in receipt of a social welfare payment in order to be eligible, has been reduced from 6 months to 3 months.
The key changes relating to the eligibility criteria of firms providing placements are:
• The Programme will be open to all sectors of the economy including, the private, public, and now the community and voluntary sectors. The Department of Finance will issue a Circular in the coming weeks on the operation of the programme in the public sector.
• The requirement for a firm to have at least 10 employees has been removed.
• Previously firms could only participate if they did not have redundancies in the previous 6 months. This constraint has been reduced to 3 months. However, the level of redundancies in the last three months were less than 5% of the workforce, these firms will be eligible to participate.
The duration of the work placement has been increased to a maximum of 9 months. The revised criteria came into effect from 1st December 2009. For eligibility guidelines and details on how to become a Participant on the Programme, follow this web link: http://www.fas.ie/en/Job+Seeker/WPP/default.htm
For eligibility guidelines and details on how to become a Provider on the Programme, follow this web link: http://www.fas.ie/en/Employer/WPP/default.htm
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