andMr. McQuillan asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce how many persons in excess of last year's figures are now unemployed through redundancy caused by the action of those firms who have taken steps to modernise their industries as a result of Government advice.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Industrial Redundancy.
50.
Industry is in the process of getting down to the task of modernisation which the Government has been urging upon it. Many of the individual firms which have applied for special grants to enable them to adapt themselves to conditions of freer trade have stated that, as a result of the adaptation, they expect to increase the amount of employment they offer, often because their increased efficiency will enable them to develop their export trades. While adaptation may mean disemployment in some individual cases, there is certainly no reason to suppose that it will give rise to net disemployment. On the contrary it is for the purpose of avoiding net disemployment that the modernisation is being advocated.
That answer, clearly, is so much hot air. Is it not a fact that there are more people unemployed this year than there were last year and is it not reasonable to assume that a number of these people are disemployed by reason of industries having taken the advice suggested by the Government? In these circumstances, surely the Minister should take his own advice, when the matter is particularly urgent, to let the workers and the trade union movement know what are the alternative resettlement and retraining schemes to be made available to workers who are made redundant as a result of adopting the Government's advice? What is the delay?
There is no reason to assume that those who are now on the unemployed register have lost their employment by reason of these adaptation schemes.
The sands are running out. There is no doubt about that.