Courses available under this fund

Eligibility

For the purposes of this Fund, participants on programmes eligible for Fund support must be in receipt of an unemployment payment for a period of at least three consecutive months, or equivalent thereof, before joining the programmes (time spent on training or education programmes will be reckonable for this three-month period).

Labour Market Activation Fund
In the Budget 2010, it was announced that €20 million of additional Labour Market Activation Funding would be available for an open request for tenders targeted at the low skilled and those suffering from unemployment in declining sectors such as construction with particular emphasis on the under 35s and the long-term unemployed. This request for tender sought innovative proposals for substantial training and education provision targeting these specific priority groups.

Following an open tender competition in which 370 tenders were received, the contracts have been awarded to organisations across the private, not-for-profit and public sectors to support specific training and education programmes.

The Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills, Mary Coughlan T.D. announced on the 3rd of June, that 26 tenders had been accepted providing 6,589 training places.
Making the announcement the Tánaiste said: "We put the Activation Fund in place to stimulate innovation in the provision of training and activation measures for jobseekers seeking to up-skill and get back into work. The response to the call for proposals for fund support exceeded the most optimistic expectations", she said, "and the overall high standard of tenders received made the task of selecting the successful proposals all the more challenging. I congratulate the successful training and education providers who participated in a very competitive process."
Two of the successful companies who were awarded contracts are Carlow based, Carlow Institute of Technology and Jacqui Doyle, JMD Consulting based in Rathvilly.

JMD Consulting in conjunction with Doyle’s Equestrian Centre, Rathvilly (www.doylesequestriancentre.ie) and Baltinglass Outdoor Education Centre (www.baltinglassoec.com), has been selected to provide courses as part of the Labour Market Activation Fund. This collaboration is marketed as Outdoor Tourism Training and all information on the programmes can be found on this site www.outdoortourism.ie and www.qualifax.ie.