New Deal addressing NI unemployment levels

An evaluation of the Government’s New Deal 25+ programme has revealed that while it has had a major impact in terms of addressing unemployment levels in Northern Ireland, participants are becoming "a more challenging group with increasingly complex and multiple barriers to employment".

One of the key elements of the Government’s Welfare to Work Initiative, New Deal for those aged 25 or over was introduced in Northern Ireland in June 1998 and was significantly extended by an enhanced programme in April 2001.

In September 2003 PricewaterhouseCoopers was commissioned by the Department for Employment and Learning to undertake an evaluation of the programme and in its report published today the key findings include:

• The New Deal 25+ programme is broadly effective in Northern Ireland in terms of re-engaging the unemployed with the labour market.
• Engaging employers effectively remains one of the key challenges and the programme would benefit from more involvement of public sector employers, and larger, more established, private sector companies.
• Participants in the programme are generally becoming a more challenging group of people with many having complex and multiple barriers to employment.
• The traditional labour market design of New Deal may no longer be the most appropriate form of intervention for the groupings identified whose specific needs are more likely to require other social or psychological interventions.
• Participants’ choice of options and post-programme destinations are inextricably linked to family circumstances and benefit entitlements.
• Issues relating to the poverty trap and the conditionality attached to benefit entitlements need to be addressed in a holistic way across Government Departments and with the co-operation of the stakeholder network..

The PricewaterhouseCoopers 'Evaluation of New Deal – Report 9' is available on the Department for Employment and Learning’s website on www.delni.gov.uk

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