Ulster Unionist Economy spokesperson Sandra Overend MLA, has voiced her concerns at the Department of Enterprise, Training and Investment’s failure to meet its Programme for Government’s targets to reduce economic inactivity.
Speaking following a Departmental briefing received today by the Assembly’s ETI committee, Mrs Overend said;
“The PWC report released today indicates that while the economy is improving at the fastest rate since 2007, households will struggle to see the benefit.
“Today the Enterprise committee received a briefing form Departmental Officials on PfG Targets and I took the opportunity to highlight the Programme for Government target to reduce economic inactivity through skills, training, incentives and job creation.
“This is a matter of some concern to me because the target for 2012/13 was to develop a strategy to reduce Economic Inactivity, but a year later and this strategy is sitting with the Executive.
“Today I was told that the officials hope it will be published before the end of the calendar year for consultation (12 weeks), and of course time will then be needed to consider a response, with a strategy materialising sometime after that.
“We are now in the 2013/14 financial year and we should be implementing key actions from the strategy not waiting for it to appear. This is hardly evidence of the urgency needed to get people back into work.”