Closer monitoring of early school-leavers can vastly improve their chances of finding work, say the initiators of a three-year programme involving young people from Ballymun and Co Mayo.
The €1.2 million Equal Youth Project focused on trying to stop early school-leavers from "slipping through the cracks", said project co-ordinator Máirín Kenny yesterday. She was speaking at an event to mark the end of the project.
The EU-funded scheme saw more than a dozen agencies, such as the Ballymun Job Centre and the Fás social inclusion unit, meet each month to try and co-ordinate assistance for about 150 young people, said Ms Kenny.
"We'd meet each month and go through the list of early school-leavers, and find out if someone was in a programme, or if they had gone off the radar, and if they had, it was someone's responsibility to track them down," said Ms Kenny.
Ms Kenny said that the Ballymun job centre was aware of about 1,200 locals aged between 16 and 24 who did not have a Leaving Certificate. Of those, about 120 people took part in the Equal Youth Project, and more than half either found work or are still in training, she said.
Minister for Youth Affairs Seán Haughey praised the project for addressing a serious social problem.
"Early school-leavers are becoming increasingly vulnerable in the labour market . . . the jobs they find tend to be low-paid and comparatively less secure," he said.
Mr Haughey said the Government could improve its services for young people, and the wider community also had a role to play.
"It's often said that it takes a village to raise a child, and this project emphasises how a collection of agencies can enhance the delivery of services."
One of the project's success stories was 23-year-old Kevin Dwyer. After leaving school at 15, Kevin expected to work in what he describes as "dead-end jobs".
"I had seven jobs since I left school," said Kevin. "Mostly warehouse work driving forklifts. Once I was a supervisor, but I was made redundant." He was unemployed for eight months.
Now, after intervention via the project, Kevin's work prospects have moved far beyond the shelves of Dublin's warehouses.
"It was a life-changing experience," says Kevin. The Equal Youth Project helped him win a place in a cross-Border training scheme, and he earned qualifications for something he was interested in - music.
After an eight-week music production course in Belfast, Kevin was taken to Vancouver, where he was trained in sound engineering and music production. He's now back in Dublin, working towards professionally recognised qualifications and a career in the industry.
"My confidence is through the roof," said Kevin. "Before this I didn't think anything of myself."