The Government will launch its Pathways to Work initiative today aimed at tackling the unemployment crisis.
The plan aims to integrate benefit and training services for the unemployed to provide a more streamlined approach to assisting people back into the workforce.
The plan will also contain proposals to cut social welfare benefits where claimants fail to co-operate with reasonable offers of education, training or employment.
Last week the Government launched its Action Plan for jobs, which is aimed at creating 100,000 jobs by 2016.
Today's Pathways to Work scheme is intended to provide the skilled workers to fill those jobs. With over 400,000 people unemployed - 38% of them for over a year- the plan could not be more urgent.
The scheme integrates unemployment benefits with training, education and job placement, under the National Employment and Entitlement Service.
Workers signing on for unemployment will be individually assessed immediately to see what training or help they need to get them back into the workforce as soon as possible.
They will be expected to engage with feasible training or job interviews they are offered.
However, if they do not co-operate, they risk having their benefits reduced. This has already happened in 500 cases since last April. They also risk being cut off if they are found to be working in the shadow economy.
Benefits like rent supplement may also be restructured to avoid traps that discourage people from moving from welfare to work.
