I move:
That Dáil Éireann, seriously concerned about the increasing number of young persons who will be seeking work in mid-1981, calls on the Government to review urgently and introduce adequate job creation schemes for youth employment.
To this motion the Minister for Labour has put down an amendment:
To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and insert "approves of the policies of the Government for stimulating the creation of employment for young persons and is confident that the Government will keep the operation of these policies under continuous review."
I intend briefly to deal with the Government amendment because it does not deserve extended consideration. It is basically the minimum possible amendment the Government could have put down in order not to have to vote against the motion.
I would be amused, if it were not such a serious matter, at the latter part of the Government's amendment, "that the Government will keep the operation of these policies under continuous review". Unfortunately all of us are familiar with what the Government mean when they say they are keeping something under review. It means they will not do anything at all about it. Members of the House who are concerned particularly with social and other such matters have received letters from Ministers or Departments, notably from Posts and Telegraphs, and they know the results.
I hope to show to the satisfaction of the House first of all the extent of the problem we are now dealing with and, second, the inadequacy of the Government response to that problem. I hope to sketch some proposals not for a solution but for a more positive and practical way to meet the problem. The first thing we have to do is to try to estimate the size of the problem. In a labour survey in 1975 it was indicated that there was then an unemployment rate of 44 per cent or thereabouts among young people. Since then, it is true to say there has been some criticism of the findings of that survey but to say that the problem is not that great does not mean that it is not a great problem. It is a great problem, one which has persisted under this Government.
We have the advantage of a new quarterly age analysis of the live register now being published by the CSO. The latest one, dated 17 October 1980, refers to people on the live register on 18 January and 18 April 1980. On the latter date, the most recent we have, there were 20,439 young people up to the age of 24 looking for work. They represented virtually a quarter of all those looking for work at that time. Therefore, 22 per cent of all those looking for work then were aged between 15 or 16 and 24 years. What the figures do not tell us unfortunately is the percentage of the total labour force those 20,500 forms, and if the Minister for Labour has that information we would be grateful to him for it.
This represents a very serious situation because it indicates that there are not just 20,500 looking for work but that between 18 April last and 1 September 1981 that 20,500 figure will have been swollen by the numbers leaving school, with or without qualifications, who will be looking for work for the first time. When we look more closely at the figure, the regional aspect is worth investigating. For instance, the figures tend to show that of those under 20 years looking for employment on 18 April last, 37 per cent lived in the eastern planning region. I think we can accept that the problem of youth unemployment is particularly acute in the eastern region. The extent of youth unemployment in the eastern region is probably greater than the proportion of the work force which actually resides there.
We also have to take into account the fact that the live register for various reasons understates the numbers of those looking for work. Those of us who in our constituency work deal with unemployment benefit and assistance cases know very well that for the average teenager living at home there is a series of disincentives to sign on for unemployment assistance. A means test is applied to young people who live at home to such an extent that what they are offered when they sign on at employment exchanges a couple of times a week would not pay the bus fares to get them in and back. They simply do not show up, they have been squeezed off the live register.
I suggest it would be a conservative estimate to say that the underestimation of these age groups in the unemployment statistics is probably as high as 33? per cent. Therefore, we can talk with some confidence of a base level of youth employment of the order of 30,000. It is to this level that we must add the school leavers of 1980 and 1981. The sad fact is that this is not a transitory phenomenon but looks set fair to be one of the most intractable economic and social problems not just here but in other countries as well.
A publication by the Council of European National Youth Committees for 1977-78 noted that at that time — things have not got much better — 17 million people were registered as unemployed in the 24 OECD member states. That figure represented 5.3 per cent of the labour force. The important thing is that 41 per cent, or almost half, were under 25 years of age despite the fact that this age group comprised only 22 per cent of the active population. In other words, in the OECD countries, which represent a fairly broad spread of economic activity, young people are represented in the unemployment statistics twice as heavily as one would expect them to be, given the proportion they form of the total population and of the labour force. The Council commented:
There is an increasing amount of evidence that youth unemployment is no passing cyclical phenomenon. There is growing recognition that in many respects youth unemployment is basically a structural problem aggravated by cyclical factors. This implies the need for more effective long-term actions than have so far been undertaken if the problem is to be solved rather than alleviated.
That is the base line. Let us look at the situation as it has developed since then. We can take the recently published White Paper on Education as a guide and assume fairly accurately that approxiamately 50,000 17-year-olds would have been coming on the labour market last year and something similar this year.
This represents the best part of 100,000 young people who will be showing up in the live register statistics when they are published. My indications are that the figure last year was 54,000 and this summer 57,000 young people will be coming on to the labour market for the first time and looking for jobs. Equally we could argue that this rate of young people coming on to the labour market will continue for the foreseeable future. We have the fastest growing youth population in Europe and our sluggish approach to the problem of unemployment in general, and youth unemployment in particular, does not offer any great hope that this problem will be seriously tackled, much less resolved. The best we can hope for under this Government is that minor adjustments will be made so that the kettle can be taken off the boil in order that the total effects of unemployment on young people will not be politically damaging to the Government in power.
Up to 1990 there will be approximately 70,000 17-year-olds every year, not all of them can be catered for by the extension and expansion of higher education. Indeed it is questionable whether they ought to be because higher education is a particular form of education which should, in my view, be available to people throughout their adult life and not just at the age of 17 or 18. To attempt to solve the youth unemployment problem simply by expanding third level education would simply be to postpone a solution to that problem.
I spoke a moment ago of the social effects of youth unemployment and these cannot be emphasised enough. It has now become increasingly evident that unemployment, like many other unpleasant things in life, frequently affects those least well equipped to deal with it. The general breakdown of community life in large urban areas has often left young people with few social contacts outside school and school-related activities. Having left school and failing to find a new work environment in which to develop their social contacts, young people may often become isolated and insecure. Insecurity can often manifest itself in aggression. Finding themselves unable to prove themselves or establish any kind of independent identity through the norm of work, young unemployed may often turn to petty crime as a means of proving themselves outside the social norm. This rejection of social norms, coupled with aggression based on insecurity, can often lead to a dislike of authority, to put it as mildly as possible, and to a distrust of police and a cynical attitude towards anti-unemployment measures, social workers and youth organisations.
I do not think anybody in this House who watched the "Today Tonight" programme yesterday dealing with Fatima Mansions would have to travel any further for the evidence. Deputy Briscoe, who spoke a few minutes ago on the budget, represents the area in which that particular establishment is located. This programme gave the most graphic illustration possible of the kind of social damage that is inflicted on young people in our society who are condemned to unemployment. Unemployment is bad enough when it hits the young or the educationally disadvantaged but when it is inflicted on those who are not only young but educationally disadvantaged as well the cumulative effect can be horrifying. Those of us who work in the city will know of the social problems which are allied with the economic ones. They will know of the difficulty of getting a job if one's address is Fatima Mansions or even Ballyfermot or some other comparatively long-established suburb or inner city area which has come to have a bad name.
Not only do young people in these areas find it difficult to get jobs but when they do succeed in acquiring employment they are frequently exploited to the most merciless degree. The Irish Transport and General Workers Union, as part of their concern for young workers generally, have published quite scarifying details of the degree to which young workers are exploited and the degree to which laws which were passed by this House in an attempt to prevent the exploitation of young people are being flouted, morning, noon and night. That is the level of the problem — a base of 30,000 seemingly almost permanently unemployed young people and 55,000 or so coming on to the labour market in each year. It is a prospect to make even a strong Government quail and this is by no means a strong Government.
To indicate the inadequacy of the Government's response in this area, I should like to refer very briefly to some of the provisions in the recently published Book of Estimates. In Vote 30 — Office of the Minister for Education — there is a grant-in-aid for youth employment schemes. Last year it was £500,000; this year it is being increased by 10 per cent or the miserly figure of £50,000. We all know what the inflation rate has been in the past year and that it has not been 10 per cent, so we may take it as axiomatic that under G. 5, the Department of Education's main contribution to youth employment schemes, there has been, as in so many areas, a cut-back in real terms.
Let us now turn to the Department of Labour or the Department of the Environment, both of which are relevant in this area. I am glad to see the Minister for Labour in the House and perhaps he can enlighten us further. The employment incentive scheme, which was not entirely devoted to young people but partly so, has actually been halved. Last year the amount provided was £4.1 million and this year it has been reduced to £2 million, so the unemployed young people who are looking forward to some employment under the employment incentive scheme — and that scheme had its faults, although at least it was a scheme — will be half as likely to get assisted places in employment this year than they were last year. Under the heading for the Department of Labour the work experience programme has been pegged at £2.1 million. Taking into account the fall of 18 per cent in the value of money this represents a drop in real terms.
I would draw the attention of the House to subhead G in the Vote for the Department of the Environment where the amount being made available for grants in respect of environmental works, on which many young people were employed, has been cut by 30 per cent from £1.5 million to just over £1 million. In all the Departments through which were provided funds for youth employment of one kind or another the story is devastating. There are only cutbacks and retrenchment.
One aspect of the Department of Labour which deserves special consideration is that related to AnCO. It could be argued that the work of AnCO is not youth employment but training. To some extent that is true, but when young people go on AnCO training courses they come off the unemployment register so it is, after a fashion, a form of employment scheme. The evidence is that young people take up about 80 per cent of AnCO training places. I will look briefly at the AnCO Vote to see the degree to which AnCO have been enabled to meet the responsibilities being thrust on them by the Government's failure in other areas. The general grant for AnCO this year is up by about 11 per cent from £17.5 million to £21 million. One does not need a pocket calculator to work out how far below the rate of inflation that is. If AnCO were to continue to provide the same measure of services they provided last year, assuming last year's were adequate, which they were not, that grant would have had to be substantially increased. That grant, like many others has been a victim of the axeman who sat around the Cabinet table towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year.
The Minister may argue that the increase for AnCO in the capital expenditure grant is hefty. It is, as it has been increased by £6 million to £9½ million this year, an increase of more than 50 per cent. It is important that the capital grant should be increased as AnCO cannot provide anything for young people unless they have premises in which to provide it. However that increase must be looked at in the context of the overall need and is the context of AnCO plans. The AnCO organisation began a massive expansion programme in 1978 and in order to achieve the Government's targets they planned to double the number trained to around 20,000 by 1982. To continue the impetus of those plans it was estimated that £11 million would be needed in the capital programme for 1980. Barely half of that amount was provided in 1980. In effect, in the 1980 budget, certainly the original budget, all they got was an extra £1 million which was the absolute minimum required to meet 1980 commitments entered into in 1979. Last year in relation to AnCO capital development was virtually at a standstill. The situation now is that with much huffing and puffing the Government's 1981 figure is still £1½ million short of what AnCO needed last year if they were to provide the places for training opportunities coming up to 1982.
There are various AnCO schemes which we will be paying for this year. There is at least one that was organised in co-operation with the VECs for summer programmes of six weeks duration for young people which could not be held last year because of the cuts and will not be held this year for the same reason. We get the impression in relation to the AnCO Vote that the positive effects of spending this £9½ million in capital terms will not be seen in the youth employment statistics for this year and that we will be lucky if they are seen by next year if the many serious problems involved in planning the work of such a large organisation over such a long period are to be adequately tackled. Basically, the programme which was ruthlessly interrupted by the Government last year, in AnCO development has been restarted but it is over a year behind schedule.
I call on the Government to consider extending the funding to AnCO to allow them to reintroduce their career training programme, run with the VECs, in the VEC schools which are unused in the summer recess. These courses were immensely popular with the VEC authorities and with young people and resulted in a very high degree of jobs placement afterwards. If we are not prepared to spend money on this now we will be picking up the pieces and paying far more for doing so later on, not just in terms of social unrest but in terms of social inadequacy, unemployment and related problems.
I have made one suggestion and I hope in a more concrete from to suggest four major steps that can be taken to close the gap on youth unemployment and give our people more hope and more confidence in their future and in the future of the country. I would argue for the establishment of a special register for all school leavers and young unemployed people.
In conjunction with this, will the Minister seriously consider whether or not, first on a voluntary basis but perhaps later on a statutory basis, employers should be required to notify the manpower service of vacancies occuring in their plant. Several EEC countries insist on compulsory notification of vacant jobs by employers to the national manpower services. It is incredible that such a step takes so long to carry out not just for the effect that it has on the ability of people to find jobs and the likelihood that they will get jobs that are suited to them but because the absence of such information must make a Government manpower policy that much more difficult to plan. Jobs are notified to employment exchanged from time to time. Is is likely that no more than 30 per cent of all vacancies are so notified. There is a serious shortfall of information. I believe requiring employers to register will not only help young people but over a period of time it will also, taken in conjunction with the fair employment legislation, help to erode the kind of situation in which people get jobs not because of what they are but because of who they are.
It is impossible to eliminate patronage completely from the employment network but we should be taking steps which will give young people more confidence in the employment market, which will make sure that all the jobs that are there are actually notified to them and that they will have a reasonably fair chance of getting any job for which they are likely to apply. Would the Minister consider notifying job vacancies in countries other than this one to young people? This, for obvious reasons, is a subject which has to be approached very delicately.
Our first priority must be to provide jobs for all our young people at home. If there are jobs available abroad and if young people want to go abroad for a couple of years to broaden their experience and come back here better qualified more experienced and more useful to our society on a voluntary basis, why should we deny them that opportunity by not at least making the information available to them? When I was 21 I went away and worked outside the country for one-and-a-half years with every intention of coming back. In my experience young people who have done that are very often able to make a very positive contribution to the world of work, the world of politics and society generally here because of the slightly broader experience. If the jobs are there and if they can be notified, especially to young people, why are they not being notified? Will they be notified?
The second major area in which an improvement can be made is in the coordination and extension of existing temporary schemes and the development of an integrated and planned programme of employment and training opportunities for the young unemployed. At the moment we have schemes under the Departments of labour, the Department of the Environment and the Department of Education. Those schemes are not only working in some odd sense in competition with each other but very often the grant and payment levels applicable to broadly similar schemes are different in different Departments. It confuses young people and their parents. They are encouraged perhaps to believe that a scheme which pays most money is the higher status scheme and the most benificial one whereas it might not be the case.
There is an urgent need for a much more integrated approach than there has been in the past. Even at the most basic level, the absence of any formal link of any significance between the trainee authority, AnCO, and the placement authority, the National Manpower Service, must be seen as a cause for concern. The right hand must know what the left is doing. There is even a case perhaps to be made for a manpower authority, not another superstructure of bureaucracy but a small steering committee or organisation designed to make sure that as far as possible the needs of young people and the needs of the employment market will be matched to the closest possible extent.
The third possible solution is that we would think seriously, in view of the seriousness of the problem and in view of the fact that employment hits young people proportionately harder, of setting up a youth employment agency as an integral part of a manpower agency or a manpower authority which would have the authority and the staff resources to implement a programme and mobilise the efforts of local communities in devising schemes. The youth unemployment problem is not just a problem: it is rapidly approaching the dimension of a crisis. If we have not got measures like this we will do no more than scratch the surface of that problem of crisis.
The fourth concrete proposal I would like to make is that there should be a development and extension of school based work-experience schemes. A number of schools already have begun such schemes with great success. It is only now that many people involved in education are coming to realise that the majority of school leavers will not be going into higher education immediately and that the school curriculum and outlook has been determined to far too great an extent by the needs of the third level sector and to a far too small extent by the needs of the huge majority of young people, well over 80 per cent, who will be going directly into the world of work if they are lucky and to the world of no work if they are not.
The schools, and many educationalists will tell you this today, have been for far too long too much the Ivory Tower, too removed from the hurly burly of the work place, too removed from the realities of the very hard life many young people have to go into. I believe there is room for massive expansion of those work-experience programmes based on the school. I believe that as long as they are based on the school and do not pose any threat to employment in the normal sense those schemes will be developed and encouraged by the trade union movement. Now is the time for the Minister for Education and the Minister for Labour, acting together, to extend those programmes to encourage further experimentation so that young people will learn about the world of work not in a brutal and sudden way but as part of a transition that can start as early as the age of 14 or 15.
Four years ago the Government, then the Opposition, made considerable play of young people, their needs, particularly their needs for employment. I do not know the degree to which that produced any electoral results. I believe that it was the anxious parents of the young teenagers of that time rather than the teenagers who responded electorally to that plea on the part of the then Opposition. Many of the young people to whom that plea was directed four years ago are still unemployed. They will still be unemployed if they are unlucky another four years from now, if the weak and ineffectual policies of the Government in relation to youth employment in particular are allowed to go on unchallenged. The Labour Party challenge the adequacy, the direction and the relevance of these programmes and call on the Government now, even at this late hour, to do something about them.
