As we were well into the global financial crisis and many people were losing their jobs, we needed an immediate plan. We quickly implemented the ReStart redundancy support and job support scheme to respond to the recession. These temporary financial packages have been recently put in place in various iterations to help us during the COVID economic crisis. We also introduced the job opportunities and Community Max programmes to specifically assist young people. Even though these were the hardest times that we had seen for a long time, we were able to see many positive results. Nearly 10,000 young people were helped with the Community Max and job support programmes and 73 percent did not go on benefit when they finished. One third of job seekers were being exited into jobs before entering the benefit system, but more had to be done. These short-term measures were important, but our welfare system was part of the reason we were seeing intergenerational welfare dependence and too many people stuck in a cycle of hardship, reliant only on State assistance and a belief they would be there for decades. 