Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 2 Dec 1981

Vol. 331 No. 5

Youth Employment Agency Bill, 1981: Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Mr. McCartin

On the last occasion I spoke about the importance of training our young people to enable us to make the maximum use of the resources we have. Imported industrial technology will not be as easy to find in the years immediately ahead as it has been in the past. On the last occasion one speaker talked about a preference by young people for white collar jobs. He quoted some studies which went to show that this preference has its origin in parental attitudes. There should be no mystery about that. It is quite obvious to us why parents want to get their children into this type of job. It is as obvious as 60 or 70 years ago when a mother wanted her daughter to marry the man with the big business or the big farm. Parents always wish their children to take up the type of jobs that will give them higher rates of pay, a greater level of security and less pressure.

That is what this preference is about. It is not an unexplainable social phenonenom that people want to get into this type of employment. We have only to look at the rates of pay applicable to apprentices and compare them with the wages available to young people joining county councils, health boards or the civil service. We can easily see why parents want their children to get those types of jobs. The average young person earns £50 a week if he becomes an apprentice welder or an apprentice technician. If a young person of the same age with a similar standard of education joins a county council as a clerk typist that person will get £89 a week. If a young person with the leaving certificate joins a county council, a health board or the civil service that person will get almost £100 per week. We recognise those people have sheltered and comfortable employment. They have absolute security because it is almost unheard of for any person who gets into the public service to have any difficulty in retaining that job. It is very questionable if they have to compete for their promotion and their increased rates of pay in the same way that people in trades and industry must. They do not face the prospect of redundancy or collapse of their employment.

Labour is like any other market which affects people. Over the years when it was realised that there was an overwhelming preference for jobs in county councils and the civil service that should have been balanced out by an evening out in the rates of pay in the different sectors, but this has not happened. The gap has tended to get wider. Those most sought after jobs are the more highly paid jobs. The fact that those jobs are sought after by everybody does not seem to encourage any sort of reduction in the rates of pay or the preferential situation those people have. I accept it is not easy to do something about this. We should plan deliberately to make the various occupations attractive to everybody. We have a habit, as politicians, of saying that the Army, the Garda Síochána, the civil service and the health boards are vital to society. All jobs are of equal importance and the Government, who are the referees in all this, should try to create some sort of equality in conditions and payment to try to prevent this overwhelming preference for one sector over another by young people when they leave school. The Government should seek to correct this trend before a situation develops such as we have today when a young person in a health board starts off getting double the rate of pay that a person in industry or an apprentice gets.

I want to refer to regional employment and regional opportunities. I am sure the Minister will take into consideration the employment of people in regional areas. In many rural areas there are no jobs for people in county councils. Our young people answer advertisements for employment in the east of the country. We would like the Minister to do everything he can to redress this imbalance. The most important thing is to create jobs in rural areas for our young people. It is obvious that we have a serious drift of young people from the land. It is very hard to get precise figures for this but in the EEC in 1960 we had 3.8 million people between 14 years and 24 years, or 25 per cent of the active agricultural population, employed in agriculture. In 1971 this was down to 0.9 million young people between the ages of 14 and 24, or 10 per cent engaged in agriculture. I know there was a greatly reduced population in agriculture in 1971 but nevertheless there is a serious drop in the number of young people engaged in agriculture. This is very noticeable in rural Ireland at the moment. A qualified agriculturalist who went into a particular area could see only one successor for every ten people at present engaged in full-time employment on the land. That is a worrying aspect of what is happening in rural Ireland. It is a great pity, considering there will not be in the immediate future sufficient jobs available for all our young people, that we cannot replace employment in agriculture by young, competent trained people.

I know it may not be the job of the Minister dealing with this Bill to deal with the whole problem of agricultural training and agricultural education because there is a separate body which deals with that. I am very worried to see such a very large amount of money being raised while at the same time the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture may not be increased. Agriculture represents a very large section of our total economy and if we are able to increase by £60 million or £70 million the amount of money available for retraining and providing for young people in employment I believe that agriculture deserves something out of this expenditure or at least an equivalent expenditure in another area.

The Minister should also consider that only 2 per cent of full-time farmers have had the benefit of one full years' training in that industry. This is an important element in what has gone wrong in agriculture. We cannot go ahead in the agricultural industry with the level of training and education we have had in the past and get that industry to grow and be competitive. I would like the Minister to comment on the regional aspect of this problem. If there must be unemployment among young people it is more important to train the young people from rural Ireland in their own rural environment rather than to take them into the large towns and cities. It is dangerous to establish all our training centres in the larger towns and cities. We must do something about the drift of young people into the cities where they will remain unemployed for a period of time where, as was pointed out by Deputy Higgins and some other people, they are more likely to get into trouble than people who have full-time jobs.

A very important element, which we did not foresee when we lifted the marriage bar and allowed wives to continue in employment, is that this has contributed to the problem we have today. I am not suggesting that we should reverse this but we must recognise that the rise in unemployment has been contributed in part by the fact that very many young married couples are both working whereas 20 years ago both were not working and did not have the opportunity to work. There is every evidence that the number of unemployed will increase in the near future in Ireland and in Europe, although studies indicate that after seven or eight years there will be more jobs than there are people available for them in Europe because of the low birth rate. However, in Ireland in the foreseeable future the situation will be different. It worries me that in ten years' time there may be many vacancies for jobs in Europe and if we do not succeed in training and employing our young people here the cycle of emigration will start again. That trend exists to some extent even now.

In the short-term we will have to come to terms with the problem of the high proportion of unemployed. There has been talk about work-sharing but I have always held that work-sharing in Ireland is not a solution. It is not an answer to our economic problems to take people out of their place of employment and reduce their working hours. We will not solve our economic problems in that way. We will solve them by getting people to work longer hours, to reduce the costs of production and become more competitive.

I have no hang-up about work-sharing. Already we have gone more than halfway towards that because we have decided to share income. If a person has no job it is accepted that that person will benefit from the fruits of the labour of those who are working and also from the fruits of his own labour when he was working. Perhaps the best solution would be to use the money we are paying the unemployed to put it back into industry and to give people jobs even if it means subsidised employment. It should not be too difficult to work out some such system. I do not believe industry has run out of work even though it may have run out of finance to create capital structures. We need more telephones, more roads and more houses. We have not run out of work. We must find some way of training our young people and giving them employment on such work. The amount of money spent on unemployment would go a long way towards employing them in the areas I have mentioned and we could get the cycle moving in another direction.

I wish to congratulate the Minister for doing something about this matter. Everyone has been talking about this serious problem but this is the first significant effort by a Minister to come to terms with it. I have warned him of where I think it could go wrong, by creating unreal employment that cannot last or by creating any kind of major administrative structure. I want to see this money spent in educating, training and preparing young people to do the work that is available and which needs to be done. I congratulate the Minister on his major effort to obtain the resources to do the job. The resources he will command are significant. I am sure that industry and individuals in employment will respond and will see this as a positive move by the Minister that will have the right effect on our prospects for the future. I am confident that the Minister will use the money in the most appropriate way to solve the problem.

Dr. Woods

I wish to welcome the Minister and to congratulate him on his appointment. This is his first Bill before the House and I should like to congratulate him on the presentation of the Bill.

We support the Bill. I especially support it provided the Minister excludes old age pensioners from the 1 per cent levy and that he excludes those people on the very lowest incomes, and here I am thinking of the impact on families. He will have our support provided the money is used to create additional employment and additional training, apprenticeship and work schemes and also provided the Bill will include the disabled.

At Question Time we had an opportunity to raise the matter of old age pensioners and the Minister told us he will exclude them. I am very happy with that aspect. He is considering what might be done in relation to those on the lowest incomes and I am happy with that. I am very concerned to ensure that additional employment will be provided and we will be looking closely at different aspects of the Bill and its implementation to ensure this is done. I was disappointed the disabled were not mentioned in the Minister's speech. I urge him to include them in a very positive way. I know he mentioned people in particularly disadvantaged conditions and circumstances that arise from their local environment but I ask him to include specifically the disabled. They should be referred to very clearly in the Bill.

There is no mention of a fund in the Bill. I should prefer to see a fund established however it was operated. It is mentioned that the operation of a fund can be complicated and technical but if a fund were established we would be able to see what happened to the money. In addition, I think the agency should have a fund available. I should prefer also to see a separate agency free from the undue influence of the Department of Finance. Some speakers have pointed to the many references in the Bill and in the Minister's speech to the function of the Department of Finance in relation to the agency. I should prefer to see it based on the concept of a development corporation. There are many examples of attempts to establish such a concept and this is one area where it should be applied. Further, I should prefer to see a list of some of the new jobs and the kind of jobs proposed in the Bill. The Minister has not told us anything about that. He has said the Bill will co-ordinate activities and support them but he has not given any indication of the new activities and the ideas that might be introduced in this area.

I would prefer to see a more equitable form of collection. There is reliance on the easy way out of putting it on people paying PAYE and PRSI. I know it is on health charges, which extends it somewhat. I asked a question in the House in July about the distribution of the new health charges and found that, of the £86 million to be collected under them, £76 million will come from those paying PAYE and PRSI, £5 million from the farming sector and £5 million from self-employed. Taking that overall it means that the PAYE sector will pay 88 per cent of this. We know that it is very difficult to collect money under the health system. The Minister cannot deny this. We hear from farmers recently, particularly in their statements last week, that they are thinking of withholding health charges totally. Hopefully they will not. At present there is considerable difficulty and inefficiency in collecting health charges.

While the estimated figure is set within £63 million, the actual collection will be considerably less than that. I have no doubt that those paying PAYE and PRSI will contribute over 90 per cent of the cost. This kind of inequity is in too many of the Government's schemes. It will bear too heavily on the PAYE sector. Most people would be happy to contribute 1 per cent for specific purposes as long as they can see where it is going and are satisfied it is not being absorbed into the Government coffers. I am not happy about the way the Minister is going about this. I am unhappy about the omission of the disabled. I am sure the Minister did not intend to omit them, but he should make it clear, especially in this year of the disabled, that this Bill is for them also.

The Minister referred to previous performance and I am happy to note that he agrees that the position has improved. He said it was encouraging that unemployment had been rising more slowly in recent months, with the rate of increase since the end of April being under 1 per cent per month as compared with 2½ per cent per month between December 1979 and April 1981. This must be related to the investment programme. The whole purpose of the £1,700 million investment programme at the beginning of the year was to stimulate employment in a range of areas. This could not have had any effect until the May period. It can be seen from events subsequently that it did have an effect. That is important because it shows that, if we invest money in areas of creative and productive employment and in general areas of infrastructural development and housing, that will help the situation in a real way. The Minister indicated clearly what had been happening in that regard.

Despite what is in this Bill we know that the Minister for Finance has been clawing back some of the funds which were made available. In the Department of Health I know that a number of projects have been stopped. I asked a question about this and got an answer giving a list of the projects which were stopped at contract stage. They would have created 500 jobs. This represented a £2.5 million clawback on the capital budget announced in the Estimates the week before last. We find difficulty in dealing with the Government because on the one hand we are talking about an agency which is supposed to be creating jobs and, on the other, the Minister for Finance is stopping projects and the building industry is suffering as a result. This worries us and particularly so when we hear the leader of the Labour Party say that he is pessimistic about the future in this regard. Unless he agrees to further cutbacks on a capital basis, I do not see why he has to be as pessimistic as he is. He said he did not see unemployment falling below 125,000 and mentioned a figure of 145,000 in the not too distant future. Other commentators visualise a figure of 200,000 unemployed. We must act to reduce unemployment. The Minister has shown what the investment programme can do. Unless we invest substantially we will not create jobs.

I am aware, and the Minister also said in the House a few weeks ago, that there are 3,801 jobs in the public service which have been held up. On the one hand, the Minister for Labour says that we must create jobs and, on the other hand, the Minister for Finance puts an embargo on jobs. That makes it very difficult to believe in the Government. I am concerned that the Minister has taken the easy way out of putting the main burden on the PAYE sector, who are already under siege. They are beginning to realise that. The Minister could have chosen other ways to raise the money. It could have been collected from banks, insurance companies, or the luxury VAT rate. These groups will benefit from the increased apprenticeship schemes and the fact that more people will be available for employment through the Youth Employment Agency.

A disadvantage of putting it on the PAYE worker is that a single person who earns £120 per week will pay £1.20 at 1 per cent. A married man with three or four children who earns £120 a week will pay £1.20 also. This is inequitable and indicates the weakness of going for the easy, quick method of collection without considering the social consequences of the measures taken. One might ask what about employers? Have they no contribution to make? Is there an undue influence of the Fine Gael side within the Coalition in relation to the way this money will be collected and the levy applied?

As regards job creation, we all agree that the IDA are the principal authority and the one on which we rely most. The Minister expressed some concern about their activity, which I shall come back to later.

The NRB are the body who deal with the disabled. This body have been reorganised during my period in office and their arm has been strengthened for the purpose of creation of employment and placing people therein. It was heartening recently to see a 30 per cent increase in the employment of disabled this year under NRB schemes. However, there are a lot of other works at the moment, and the Minister could have said that he would see some of the money going to increase the moneys available to these other works. For instance, Dublin Corporation give tremendous employment and it would be good if they could be told now that they will get some money from this scheme to enable them to create employment right away. Painters, journeymen and other skilled people who are out of work now are looking for opportunities and are prepared to take on apprentices and give them work. For example, a number of our schools, community centres and public buildings are in need of painting. Surely, on the old Keynesian approach, it is better to give some of these skilled people support from schemes such as this. After all, this money is coming from my pocket, your pocket and the pockets of other PAYE people to solve short-term problems and to help improve the situation on a short-term basis. It would be worth while to make some of this money available and let some of these people get on with work. I know plenty of people on the north side of Dublin who could give employment to youth if this kind of work was there. I am disappointed that the Minister has not given some indication of the kind of things he might do. It is important to get people working now.

It is particularly disillusioning and disheartening, and becoming increasingly so to realise the increasing numbers of unemployed. In a survey of one of the communities on the north side of Dublin it became clear that in many cases three, four or five people in the one family were unemployed. It is bad enough to have one child unemployed. Anyone who has a son or daughter will know that to have that child complete his or her education and then sit at home with nothing to do is very upsetting for that child, whose disillusionment is heartbreaking. For that to continue for any length of time is a great upset to the whole family. I would like to see the introduction of some special measure to deal with such situations. In some cases the father has been made redundant at perhaps 50 years of age because of present economic circumstances and he has two or three good grown-up boys or girls who at present are not working either. Indirectly this brings us into the disadvantaged situation mentioned by the Minister. I have some direct experience of that and it is not a very pleasant experience. I would like to see some of this money applied very urgently in such areas.

In my practice as a TD I find the work of AnCO in relation to work experience and apprenticeship programmes is first class. The main problem is the question of having sufficient opportunities and places and consequently enough money to create these. They have the mechanism to do the job and in trying to find places for the people such as I have mentioned earlier AnCO are a tremendous aid and the National Manpower Service likewise. If they can be given additional funds they will do the job.

One thing is happening in Britain which we should be very careful to see does not happen here. We do not want to see the father's job being taken by the son. A case was recently reported in Britain where the father was made redundant and the son was taken on through one of these schemes. We must be careful about that, and here is where we come back to the expertise of the agencies. The people in Manpower and AnCO have been working with these companies for some time, they know the situation and, generally speaking, they will be able to prevent that sort of thing happening.

We are talking here about additional money or, if we are not, the Government should be honest and say that they are just trying to sidle some of this money into the coffers of the Minister for Finance. I am working on the basis that we are talking about additional money and we will be pursuing it on that basis subsequently. I warn the Government that any shred of credibility they have will be lost if it is not seen clearly that this money is used in an additional sense. Of course, this money could be used to extend the numbers in the Army, the Garda, the health services or the Naval Service for cadets, or in the State agencies such as B & I, Bord Fáilte and so on who are employing people. A number of these young men are very keen to get into the Army where, in the first instance, the training is very good for them. It is to be hoped that some of the major investment programmes will have progressed by the time they will have done their Army service. I would like the Minister in his reply to say how he envisages some of this additional money will be spent. He has given us no plans so far.

Why have a new agency? Does it mean that AnCO, the National Manpower Service or the IDA are defective in some way? In relation to the IDA the Minister said:

While some efforts have been made to remedy this imbalance they have lacked real conviction and consequently their impact has not been significant.

The Minister should take that out of his speech and throw it away. I would not like to have that on the record of this House in relation to the activities which have been undertaken by the IDA, AnCO and the National Manpower Service. It is not our experience either on the ground or in Government and I do not think that the Minister really believes that. If he feels that there is a need for an additional agency he should talk about the value of the additional agency and not denigrate the activities of the existing bodies who have been working hard to try to meet a very difficult situation with considerable success, especially in comparison with our European partners, in these recent years.

Further on the Minister referred to the same theme and I quote:

While the present and future activities of the IDA and other development bodies will go some way towards the necessary expansion in our productive capacity and in exports, the Government are convinced that further initiatives are needed.

He said "some way". We must be very clear that the activities of the IDA must be our mainspring activity here to create productive employment. They have gone a lot more than "some way" towards meeting the situation. It is a suggestion that their efforts and operation have been defective in some way, and I do not agree with that. We can all do with improving personally our own effectiveness in this House in Government, as backbenchers and so on. By any standards the IDA have made a major contribution to solving the problems facing us.

With regard to the whole question of the semi-State bodies in relation to the National Development Corporation the Minister said:

The work of the corporation in promoting efficiency in this area will help develop a professional, vigorous and successful State sector which can contribute greatly to the growth of the economy.

There are suggestions in the Minister's speech that these bodies are not pulling their weight or being effective. If that is the case, then it is not desirable to make that kind of reference in a general way. The Minister should be more specific about where he believes this to be the case.

I would be concerned that in this Bill and in these statements there might be a conspiracy between the National Development Corporation and this agency to take back the semi-autonomous powers from AnCO and the IDA, whose real virtues were their freedom from bureaucracy. We may disagree with some of the things they do, but the Minister should bear strongly in mind that it was their very freedom which gave them that flair to attempt new projects. It is well known that AnCO were most successful in developing our segment of the European Social Fund. In the first instance it was their go-getting approach which set that under way. Indeed they surprised everybody by the amount of money they were able to recoup from the European Social Fund. I would be most concerned that the independent and autonomous nature of those activities might be affected in any way. The Minister should take particular care that this new agency will not interfere in any bureaucratic way with the activities of those valuable organisations.

I note that with regard to this agency that, right from the point of setting up, the Minister for Labour is dependent on the Minister for Finance for consent for action, change and so on. Of course the Minister for Finance controls the finances down to the last penny. Presumably, even if they want to buy toilet paper, they must get some form of clearance. That is a dangerous sort of situation. It is important to ensure that they be given the independence previously given to AnCO which they used successfully in tackling the tasks assigned to them.

There is a danger also of some conflict of interest in getting funds from the European Social Fund — the Minister referred to this also in his introductory remarks — where the European Social fund will be involved in funding the programmes concerned. Presumably this will be done through the agency. AnCO have been especially successful in getting funds in this respect. There is the danger of conflict arising between the agency, AnCO and the Department of Education and, on the other hand, the Department of Finance, who will be controlling the agency and its funding. I would be most concerned about that aspect also, which is something the Minister should consider carefully.

Of course we will be watching the Estimates to ensure that the normal increases are given to these agencies, such as AnCO and the other training activities that come under the umbrella of this agency. We should see an increase in the Estimates anyway for these activities and there should be additional moneys granted. We will be watching carefully to ensure that that money is granted. I am addressing these remarks more perhaps to the Minister for Finance and his colleagues rather than to the Minister for Labour directly, because I am sure the latter will be glad to receive as much money as he can.

We will be watching carefully for the necessary increase along with these additional moneys, which I am sure the vast majority of people will be prepared to pay provided they can see them being spent on additional activities. We will be scrutinising these Estimates to ensure that any additional moneys granted are not used in an attempt to collect money for the Minister for Finance, thereby evading his responsibility in this area. There have been examples of this in Britain where the autonomous powers were taken from their training boards and given over to their Department of Finance, leading eventually to approximately 16 of them being abolished recently. This is something about which I would be most concerned. It would be better that this agency be established more as a semi-State body attached to the Department of Labour, affording them the freedom to get on with the job. trusting the people who will be involved, allowing them to do the job on our behalf. Let us talk about general policies but let us allow them get on with the job on a day-to-day basis. Let the Department of Finance say how much money they will or will not give them and then allow the Comptroller and Auditor General ensure that it is spent in accordance with the wishes of this House. If the Department of Finance must have a say in all of their activities, that can have a stultifying effect.

Of course the Minister is not here giving a guarantee of a job. He has said that he hopes all of these things will lead to a much improved atmosphere for job creation. I have said that I would particularly like to see work carried out on the environment and in the caring professions where there is tremendous scope. I know that some Members of this House have said that these caring jobs are not as productive as are direct, productive investment in industry or agriculture. However, I believe that their contribution to the economy and to the social fabric of our society is productive and important. Indeed there are many young people keen to look after the handicapped, old age pensioners and so on. Therefore I would hope a proportion of these funds would be used in the caring professions. The Industrial Development Authority can make a huge contribution in the creation of employment.

I mentioned the question of the disabled and usage of the funds specifically for them. The first step here is their assessment, now being undertaken by the National Rehabilitation Board on a very limited budget and numbers of personnel. One of the features of this International Year of the Disabled, becoming increasingly clear, is that disabled people themselves have felt more prepared to come out and look for work because they have discovered there is a place for them within the environment. Speaking about the 30 per cent increase in placements under the National Rehabilitation Board this year, it should be said that they brought out this point: the disabled themselves feel happier in coming forward, it is not all a question for the employer directly, whether that be in the public service or elsewhere. The disabled themselves seem to feel sufficiently confident, wanting to come out and become involved. In such an environment there is the opportunity of further stimulation, affording the disabled and handicapped a real place in our society. Certainly I should like to see a proportion of this money being used specifically for that purpose. Following assessment by a National Rehabilitation Board team, a large proportion of the disabled will be integrated into normal employment, as has happened in other countries. Indeed it is happening increasingly here, even if slowly in relation to the numbers over all.

There remains then a minority who must attend community workshops, vocational training units or engage in sheltered employment of one type or another. They need money also. The Minister will be aware from his experience travelling around the country that the provision of such community workshops and sheltered employment units constitute a priority at present. This is an area which could receive a boost from this fund which would be welcomed throughout the country. The third category consists of disabled people with multiple handicaps who need special facilities. They should be kept in mind and given some additional aid under this scheme.

In regard to employment of the disabled, I raised the question of the civil service examinations with the Minister recently. The Minister may have discovered since that there is considerable concern about the view taken by the Civil Service Commissioners in that regard. I would like the Minister to put it clearly on the record that there is a welcome for the partially sighted and those with impaired sight of varying degrees within this 3 per cent in the civil service. The degree of disillusionment is growing considerably. This should be a welcome opportunity for the Minister to put it on the record that there is a welcome for these people. It would allow those concerned with educating the blind and those with impaired sight to look towards the civil service as one of their objectives. Blind people and visually impaired people have taken very high posts in the public service in England, even to the post of assistant secretary, and on the commercial side here a number of such people have taken high administrative posts and can handle them very competently. We can open up whole new vistas for the disabled.

I welcome this Bill with some reservations about the way in which it is being done. I hope that what I have said will be useful to the Minister when he is considering the Committee Stage of the Bill and in the subsequent implementation of the Bill. I certainly hope it will be useful in creating additional employment and training which is needed.

Mr. O'Donnell

Os é seo an chéad ócáid dom labhairt i láthair an Aire, ba mhaith liom mo chomhgháirdeas a dhéanamh leis as ucht a cheapacháin agus guím rath Dé ar a shaothar. Chomh maith leis sin, ba mhaith liom comhgháirdeas a dhéanamh leis as ucht an Bhille seo. Níl aon amhras ar chor ar bith ná gurb í an fhadhb is mo atá againn ná fostaíocht a chur ar fáil do aos óg na tíre. Tá fadhb an-mhór ann atá ag cur buartha ar an Rialtas, agus ba chóir an Freasúra agus gach Teachta Dála a bheith buartha faoi staid na fostaíochta faoi láthair, go háirithe faoi mar a bhaineann sé le aos óg na tíre.

Is Bille an-mhaith é an Bille seo. I gcomparáid leis na hiarrachtaí a bhí déanta sna blianta atá thart is é mo thuairimse, agus táim cinnte de go n-aontaíonn an chuid is mó de na Teachtaí liom, gur céim mhór ar aghaidh é an Bille seo ó thaobh fostaíocht a chur ar fáil do aos óg na tíre, agus os rud é go bhfuil mé ag caint i nGaeilge deirim go bhfuil súil agam go bhfuil an Ghaeltacht san áireamh maidir leis an mBille seo, mar tuigim go bhfuil údarás forbartha uile don Ghaeltacht. Chomh maith leis sin, tá sé fíor-thábhachtach ó thaobh na Gaeltachta agus ó thaobh na teanga agus an chultúir de, go gcuirfear fostaíocht ar fáil, go háirithe do na daoine óga san Ghaeltacht.

I am pleased to have the opportunity of congratulating the Minister on this Bill. It will be recognised by most people that this Bill is a major step forward in tackling, in a realistic and practical way, the problem of providing full employment for a growing young population which has had better educational opportunities than previous generations. This has major implications not just for the Government but for every party and every Deputy. It is our job to try to create full employment of a range and variety and of a quality that will satisfy the aspirations of young people leaving schools, colleges and various educational institutions.

The thinking behind this Bill reflects the Minister's own considerable experience as a vice-chairman of the committee for youth in the European Parliament over the past six or seven years. In introducing the Bill he referred to the experience in other European countries and the approaches adopted to tackle the question of youth employment. From the limited amount of knowledge I have, both from listening week after week in Strasbourg or Brussels or at meetings of our own political groups in Europe, I know that there is great concern in all the member states about youth employment. The Minister referred to the Scandinavian experiment which is generally recognised in Europe as being an excellent model. I welcome this approach. I cannot refrain from comparing this very practical and realistic approach to the problem of the youth employment with the puny efforts that have been made in recent years and the various schemes set up which were totally ineffective and amounted to a situation where nothing but lip-service was being paid to this problem. Coming from a constituency which includes the third city of this State, Limerick, I am concerned about providing employment for our young people. We should not lose sight of the fact that our situation here is uniquely different from that in most other Western European countries. We have a growing population. We have to create new employment to ensure that we can make the best possible use of this tremendous human resource that we have in our young people. The Minister and other people have pointed out that other countries have the opposite problem, a declining population and not enough people to man the industries in the various sectors of the economy.

I welcome this new Bill. I agree with the Minister's decision to set up the agency on an ad hoc basis at the beginning. Some of the people who have spoken in this debate have asked the Minister to spell out the type of projects that will be undertaken. But I am pleased that the Minister envisages a widely representative board to operate this new agency.

The Minister was wise to set up this board on an ad hoc basis, let it find its own feet, decide its own projects and determine over a period of time the best approach. I welcome wholeheartedly this new approach to the question of youth employment. The Minister referred to two very important dimensions in the creation of employment opportunities for the young. The solution to the problem must be looked at in the context of national development and overall employment. We must honestly face facts. If we are to tackle the daunting challenge of creating full employment in the eighties for our growing young population, new strategies and approaches and completely new attitudes to the question of national development must be formulated and implemented.

I welcome the decision of the Government to establish the National Development Corporation. I sincerely hope that this new corporation will not be just another semi-State body but will work in isolation, and perhaps in competition and rivalry with the IDA and other semi-State bodies. There is a multiplicity of organisations, perhaps too many, involved in youth development at national and regional levels and a dire need for marshalling the input of the different agencies into a properly integrated national development programme. A National Development Corporation will, as the Minister said, assist, and indeed facilitate, the work of the new agency which is invisaged here.

Another aspect of this whole question, which has been referred to by a number of speakers, is the relationship between education, training and employment. It is vitally important to have a rethink on the whole thrust of our educational system, to see that it is geared towards ensuring that young people leaving our educational institutions will be qualified in the skills and disciplines for which there will be a demand, whether it be in industry or in the service sector. I agree with the Minister that there is too much emphasis on the academic aspect of education and this has been referred to by other speakers. I know of three cases of young people in my constituency, each of whom holds a BA and a Higher Diploma of Education, but cannot get a job. Jobs in the post-primary sector are very scarce, particularly in our secondary schools. I know also of three young ladies employed in industry in manual jobs and very glad to have them, because they cannot get the jobs for which they are qualified. Another young person in my constituency has had for four years an academic qualification from University College, Cork, but has now started on a 12 months computer training course. With proper career guidance at school level this situation would not obtain.

There is in my constituency a tremendously successful development in the National Institute for Higher Education — a completely new concept in technological education. There was a lot of controversy in the past when the demand in Limerick was for a traditional university. I had public and private discussions with my late lamented colleague, Deputy Donogh O'Malley, who was then Minister for Education, which Deputy Brendan Daly will also remember. The National Institute for Higher Education was established to provide a special type of education and training to prepare our young people for employment and gradually the idea sank in that adequate traditional ivory tower education was available in the universities but that a move forward was needed in the light of the rapid industrialisation which took place in the sixties and seventies. There have been tremendous strides made with the co-operative education system in which students spend two terms of a four-year course working in the businesses to which their studies are related. This education is producing an excellent type of graduate who will find it relatively easy to get a job in industry. This may be what the Minister had in mind when he dealt at some length in his introductory speech about the relationship between education and employment.

I am glad to have this opportunity of paying tribute to the tremendous development of the regional technical colleges. Of recent years there have been more unique developments, such as the IDA, the CII, the IIRS and other agencies with a function in industrial development and employment creation. These cater for the complex needs of industry and development. Young people are assisted in pursuing their academic courses at Plassey, thus ensuring that they are equipped with the skills and disciplines which will be demanded by future industry in the region. We have an enterprise centre there and the point I am about to make is not irrelevant in the context of what we are doing now, setting up a youth employment agency. It is appropriate that we should emphasise that the agency should encourage enterprise. There is great need to emphasise enterprise to encourage young people to use their initiative and their talents in entrepreneurial efforts to create new businesses and so forth. There is great need for entrepreneurship, for the encouragement of youth enterprise, for thinking up new ideas and applying them in a practical way. I hope this new agency will bear this in mind.

The new agency should consider particularly the development of youth enterprise with particular emphasis on the utilisation of youth talents. There is tremendous scope for the encouragement of youth co-ops, the encouragement of young people to form co-ops. Of course side by side with that adults should be encouraged too. The role of the co-operative movement in the field of employment creation has not been fully realised here. We have a highly developed co-operative movement in the agricultural sector, particularly dairying, but my point is that the co-op movement offers tremendous scope for the creation of youth employment for which this Bill is specially designed.

Perhaps I am bordering on the fanatical on the subject of co-operativisation because when I was Minister for the Gaeltacht I became involved in this and I tried to the best of my ability to push the development of co-ops. I saw the tremendous work of Father McDyer in Glencolumbkille. He created employment virtually out of nothing in a remote parish on the western seaboard. It grieved me to read recently that problems have arisen there. I would never be daunted or upset by problems and I hope Father McDyer will get co-operation and assistance so that the Glencolumbkille co-operative will solve its problems and continue with its tremendous work. When I left office there were about 300 people in full-time employment in various projects in that parish, most of them young people. Therefore, I hope the Minister will bear in mind the potential of the co-operative movement in relation to the work of this agency.

It is important that we acknowledge the tremendous amount of voluntary work being done in the field of catering for youth. We have a wide variety of organisations, such as the National Youth Council, catering for young people. In nearly every constituency there are voluntary groups concerned with and working for youth. I hope this agency will be given flexibility and discretion to assist and to encourage such group experiments and pilot projects. For example, there is a group in Limerick, one of hundreds throughout the country, who look after St. Martin's Centre. The centre was set up in 1976 and its objectives were to provide facilities for the education, rehabilitation and training of teenage children of travelling people and underprivileged children from the settled communities in Limerick. There are contributions by AnCO and by the VEC, plus an enormous voluntary contribution by a local group. That group do an enormous job raising funds locally to help to finance that project.

I hope that experiments and pilot projects of that kind in such situations will be helped by the Youth Employment Agency, that the agency will have sufficient flexibility to do that kind of work. Those voluntary organisations are doing first class jobs but the work cannot be done completely by voluntary effort.

This whole problem is complex and wide. I listened to part of the debate last week and I had an opportunity to read some of the speeches made, and I found it significant that speakers from all sides of the House expressed great concern about the magnitude of the problem confronting us, the daunting task to be faced by the nation throughout the eighties to create full employment of a kind and a variety and a quality that will meet the aspirations of our growing young population who have better educational opportunities than all previous generations. It is a daunting and frightening task but we must tackle it if we are to survive as a nation and if we, the present generation of politicians, are to prove worthy of the trust handed down to us. If we are to be worthy of the sacrifices made for the foundation of this State we must make a superhuman effort to tackle this problem.

The Minister referred to possible sources of finance vis-à-vis the EEC. The Minister validly will be expecting a substantial contribution from the social fund. That is only right and proper because if the EEC is to have any meaning at all for a small country on the periphery of Europe it is logical to expect that the EEC will recognise the magnitude of the problem confronting us, particularly in relation to employment creation. We should also look seriously at the possibility of subventions from the EEC Regional Fund in this context. All Deputies who have spoken viewed this as a serious situation which needs new thinking, new approaches, new strategies. This Bill represents a major step forward. I hope sincerely that the agency being set up will live up to the Minister's expectations. I have no doubt about the personal commitment of the Minister to the great national task of providing employment for our young people.

I should like to make one final comment. When he was speaking last week Deputy Higgins dealt at length with the concept of and the need for planning. Unfortunately, the word "planning" has a bad connotation. If you advocate a planned economy, you will be called an economist. We have to be realistic. Deputy Daly agrees with me that the word "planning" can be misconstrued in relation to economic planning. There is a dire need for proper national economic planning, but there is also a need for regional planning. As I understand it, a plan is in course of preparation for proper national, economic, social and manpower planning, but there is equal need for regional planning. We must get away from a situation in which there is a multiplicity of organisations in every region with no overall co-ordinating agency to formulate a plan and be responsible for the implementation of a development programme.

Ba mhaith liom mar fhocal scoir comhgáirdeas a dhéanamh arís leis an Aire, agus tá súil agam go n-éireoidh go h-an-mhaith leis an eagras nua seo. Guím rath Dé ar an obair.

Mr. Daly

Like other speakers I wish the Minister well in the Department of Labour. I also wish the staff well. In the short time I was in the Department I found a hard-working and dedicated staff, fully committed to the work in hand. We must all recognise that there are no easy solutions to the problem of youth unemployment. There is no solution which any Minister or Deputy, or any politician in Europe today, can pull out of a hat for the growing problem of youth unemployment. If the Minister and the Government feel that introducing a measure of this nature will in some way paper over, camouflage or window-dress this problem, I warn them that is a very dangerous attitude to adopt. It is dangerous especially from the point of view of young people who may often sound or appear to be outrageous, but are seldom stupid. If an effort is made to evade the problems by creating a structure which has not got the necessary power and finances, the young people for whom this Bill is designed will see through it and the blame will fall on the shoulders of the Government and it will be a heavy one.

The Bill gives us an excellent opportunity to discuss the whole complex area of youth unemployment and the steps necessary in the short-term and the long-term to find solutions. For some time, and especially since 1976, Governments were faced with this alarming increase in youth unemployment. Most Governments were taken by surprise and believed the problem would go away when the economic recession eased. Five or six years later most countries are beginning to see that the problem has worsened. It is now apparent that different and long-term measures are called for.

At the risk of boring the Leas-Cheann Comhairle I should like to deal with some of the strategies adopted in other countries to cope with the youth unemployment problem to see if it is possible for us to adopt and adapt some of them to suit our circumstances having regard to our different population structure compared with other countries and some of the members states of the EEC. Recently I read many speeches made by the Tánaiste about the usefulness of an early retirement scheme and the effect it might have on creating employment opportunities for young people. In Germany an early retirement scheme removed about 300,000 people from the workforce in the first year in which it was introduced. This was done mainly by giving partial pensions and a voluntary age for retirement. The bulk of the jobs created was filled by young people.

This is a very expensive scheme to operate. Anyone who looks at the cost of pension schemes today will see that, if an early retirement scheme is to be meaningful and worthwhile, it will cost an enormous amount of money. Also this is a once-off situation which cannot be repeated after the first year. Despite the fact that the German scheme was successful and could probably be implemented here, I feel the effects of such a scheme here would be limited, would be once-off and would be frightfully costly. At the same time, the agency should direct its attention to it to establish whether or not the money an early retirement scheme would cost could be put to better use. The Danish Government introduced an early retirement scheme which took about 50,000 people off the workforce. The experience there was that the bulk of the jobs created was filled by young people.

Another scheme mentioned recently related to shorter working hours. This scheme could create extra jobs, but it would be a very limited number of jobs. Shorter working hours are concerned mainly with the improvement of working conditions rather than a worthwhile job creation project. If there is a possibility of creating employment opportunities through the re-arrangement of working hours, flexi-time, and so on, it should be looked at. The experience in other countries could be examined and adapted to suit our circumstances.

Looking at the United States one sees that they have struck a very real balance between basic academic knowledge and practical experience during school going years. They have a type of apprenticeship built into or incorporated into the educational system. This makes for a smooth transition from school to working life and in many cases proves to be the most effective way of dealing with the transitional period. During my time in the Department I found that to be one of the most difficult periods for young people. I am very interested in the developments which have taken place and, as Minister of State at the Department of Labour, I participated in a worthwhile exercise which took place in Drogheda—the schools-industry link scheme. A meeting was held between parents, students, industrialists and career guidance personnel aimed at, and succeeding to a very large extent, improving the attitude of young people to industrial employment. We will have to pay far more attention to this vital area in future. Just before I left the Department of Labour we found, and it is probably still the case, that there was a mismatch between the jobs available and the skills of people seeking employment. When unemployment rates were very high there were 3,000 vacancies on the books of the National Manpower Service for skilled workers which they were unable to fill.

There is an attitude here to industrial employment which will have to change very quickly. Educationalists, industrialists, schools, career guidance people, parents and pupils will all have to work together to see how these attitudes can be changed. It is evident to anyone who looks at the situation that the main thrust of employment opportunities in the future will come from industrial projects and ventures, which are already starting. Unless there is a change of attitude towards industrial work we will continue to have high rates of unemployment of young people and manpower shortages of skilled workers. We should encourage the further extension of schools-industry link schemes which are taking place today in a number of centres. They should be put on a firmer footing and young people should be encouraged not to think of industrial work as something to drift into. They should go into industrial work because of the opportunities, the satisfying career and the bright prospects of promotion and return for their labour.

There is evidence to show that wage rates for women are something like 50 per cent less than the average male income. There is also evidence from surveys done in the west that young women drifted into industrial work because they felt there was nothing else for them to do. They worked in industry until such time as an alternative job became available, either in the public service or as a trainee nurse. We will have to think very carefully about the way in which the whole curriculum is suited to young women. The only way to redress the imbalance which exists between men and women's pay is by getting women into highly-skilled jobs providing opportunities.

During 1978 and 1979, when industrial growth increased substantially shortages for highly qualified and skilled labour emerged. The experience of our EEC partners, the United States and Japan shows that when the links between education and work are strong, the country is better equipped to deal with the challenge of providing satisfying work for its young people. The question of links between industry and schools, parents and career guidance people cannot be over-emphasised. I should like to take this opportunity to direct the attention of educationalists and pupils to the opportunities in this whole area, encourage them to look at these areas in the future and to see how problems can be solved.

I am concerned at the attitude, mainly of Government Deputies, that nothing was done during the past few years about dealing with the problem of youth unemployment. When we were in office we took a number of successful measures. I do not want to go into them in detail, but the evidence is there. The commitment, the will and co-ordination were there.

While I welcome the agency, there has been during the past number of years very close co-ordination and co-operation between all the agencies involved in this field. Anyone who looks at the success of the various schemes will see that very successful youth employment schemes were operated. They need to be updated and reviewed, but a very high-powered team of the National Manpower Consultative Committee dealt with the co-ordination of the various schemes.

I should like to comment on the financing of the agency. The opportunity is here for the Minister and the Government to hive off to the agency much of the responsibility — and probably the blame — for some of the problems and for not finding solutions to them. It is easy to say you have X number of millions available through a levy for this Youth Employment Agency which will enable it to do far more than is being done at present. Take, for instance, the scheme announced by the Minister for Finance some time ago. He provided £200,000 to establish the youth employment service scheme and the youth employment enterprise scheme. In reply to a parliamentary question on 25 November the Minister for Finance told me:

The youth employment services scheme and the youth employment enterprise scheme will be administered by the proposed Youth Employment Agency, under the aegis of the Minister for Labour.

This is the first indication we had that schemes which are supposed to be administered by the Departments would be moved to the agency. The Minister continued:

While a number of inquiries have been received by my office, no applications have yet been received. It is hoped that the Youth Employment Agency will be in a position to invite applications under these schemes in the future.

The general public believe we have a youth services scheme and a youth enterprise scheme with £200,000 to spend and normally it would be expected that this money would be spent before the end of December. Not a penny of that money has been spent yet, in spite of all the speeches we have had since the change of Government about the desirability of dealing with the youth employment situation.

There is no way the Youth Employment Agency will be established before 1 April. We are at the Second Stage of this Bill and Committee and Final Stages have to be discussed in this House, and then it will have to pass through the Seanad. This means there is no way the agency will be working before April. What will become of the £200,000 which the Minister for Finance announced with a great flourish? will it be carried forward? Will there be £500,000 available next year? The Appropriation Accounts, 1980, show the money which has been spent under various headings by different Departments. Will the grant for voluntary organisations for the employment of development officers be directed to the Youth Employment Agency? Will the grant aid fund for youth and sport organisations—£1.5 million — be operated by the agency? Will the grant aid fund for youth employment — £500,000 — be operated by the agency? Will all the schemes presently operated by the Department of Labour — for example, career information, the grant for the training of personnel in the Irish Management Institute, the training of young people in the hotel and catering industry, the employment incentive scheme, the employment maintenance scheme from which many young people benefited, the work experience programme — be hived off to the agency?

If the Government transfer all these schemes to the agency the levy will be very quickly swallowed up and there will be no additional money. I can see many Departments trying to transfer areas for which they have responsibility at present to the Youth Employment Agency. At that time we will not be better off but worse off because less money will be available. There will be a slowing down of the drive towards the creation of temporary employment opportunities for young people. This was very useful because it provided training and experience for young people and in many cases provided facilities which were not previously available, such as sports complexes and projects of this nature.

I am very worried because on 25 November the Minister for Finance told me £200,000 would be provided for these schemes but not one penny has been spent yet. If the Government have a commitment in this area, why not spend that money now rather than carry it forward to next year? Many young people will not be able to avail of the opportunities which should have been available before the end of this year. This gives me cause to doubt the Government's sincerity in this area.

I welcome the fact that representation will be given to outside bodies, especially the National Youth Council of Ireland who made a submission to the Government setting out what they considered to be problem areas which needed to be dealt with. Youth organisations should be encouraged to put forward their views and they should be represented on this agency. Earlier I hinted at the need for long-term strategies because many of our existing schemes deal with short-term problems. The statistics on youth employment are poor and need to be improved. This is an area where the agency have a big part to play. It is important that the National Youth Council of Ireland be represented on the agency.

I would like to touch on the future technological advances and changes that are taking place. Some experts have estimated that in the area of knowledge of technology that will be available in the year 2000, only about 25 per cent is known today and 90 per cent of the engineers and scientists who ever lived are still alive today. A recent survey carried out among European executives by an international management magazine found that the two leading obstacles to management doing the most effective job possible during the eighties was (1) the lack of adequately trained personnel and (2) keeping pace with new technologies.

We are entering into an era of technical culture, and widespread technical knowledge will be needed in the population as well as highly trained personnel. These people will have to be competent in a wide range of business functions, research, development, design, manufacturing and marketing and in different technologies. More young people must embark on technological careers. Deputy Higgins, in the course of his contribution, touched on this. He expressed the view that technology needed to be controlled. In my view technology needs to be managed very carefully and it will need the direction of the educationalists here immediately to see in what way we can maximise the benefits of the new technological advances which are taking place all round us. We can be involved in this and get benefits from it and our young people will be able to avail of the job opportunities that new technology will provide for us in the future. Rather than control technology we need to exploit it in a more vigorous way than we have been doing. We can do this by changing our attitudes towards technology in many respects, having our curriculum developed in a way in which it will be flexible so that when people embark on careers they will know what they are taking on. We should ensure that in the event of opportunities fading in one area our children will be quickly adaptable to take up opportunities in other areas. It is because this area is so broad and complex that we need to direct more attention to it than we have done up to now.

In the electronics field in January 1975 some 5,000 people were employed in it but by June 1979 the figure had doubled to 10,000. The number of professional and technical workers employed in industry had grown by almost 50 per cent between 1971 and 1977 while at the same time a sharp decline had taken place in the opportunities for unskilled people. In fact, we had to embark on recruitment campaigns in the United Kingdom to get skilled personnel over here. We had to do that to attract mechanical and electrical engineers and electronics technicians back to Ireland. We had to pay them substantial grants to resettle here at a time when there was a lot of unemployment among our young people. Expectations for employment in the coming years are for an increase in the industry sector. There will be some increased employment in the services and I should like to encourage this and to encourage employment opportunities in small industries. That is why I welcomed a commitment when the mid-west region was initiated by the development agencies towards the promotion and creation of small industrial projects. I also welcomed the direction given to the Shannon Development Company to engage in a pilot project in my region to encourage small companies to get off the ground and create employment opportunities. Millions of jobs were created in the United States by small industrial projects. In the United States small is beautiful and it is beautiful here also. The opportunities for small industrial companies are unlimited if we had the drive and the finance for them. I should like to direct the attention of the agency to this whole area of the promotion and encouragement of small industrial projects where one does not have the same difficulties as experienced in large industrial complexes with personnel and industrial relations. While one does not get those problems in the small industrial operation at the same time a substantial number of jobs can be created by them.

More attention will have to be paid to those areas. I welcome the opportunity the Bill affords us to discuss this whole complex area. I welcome the decision to establish the agency provided it is not used by other Departments to hive off their responsibilities and save money under various subheads which will be shifted to the agency. The debate gives us an opportunity to review policies and plans for the future. It would be foolish of the Government to believe that there is an easy solution to this problem. The Minister will see this as he goes ahead and I hope he directs the attention of the agency to the variety of ways we can make it more meaningful and attractive for young people to get worthwhile jobs. If that is done our young people will be able to stay at home. We must stop the move away from Ireland now, and the new agency has an important role to play in that regard. The agency can be assured of encouragement from this side of the House in its work.

Mr. B. Allen

Is mian liom fáilte a chur roimh an mBille seo mar ta sé anathábhactach fadhbanna fostaíochta a laghdú díreach. I should like to welcome this Bill in my first contribution in the House. It is a highly imaginative piece of legislation and one which is long overdue because we, unlike other countries, face unusual problems. The trend in most industrialised countries is for the population to drop. The birth rate is not keeping pace with the mortality rate but in Ireland the problem has changed in recent years. As we all know immigration has replaced emigration and our young population is growing. It has been said that the unemployment figures at present are in the region of 130,000 and that the number of unemployed who are under 25 years of age is about 45,000. Unfortunately, with the present economic situation not only are jobs being lost but we are also experiencing a decrease in the rate of job creation. Taking that into context we must look at the problems facing our young people, even from primary school age. Our children face problems when they enter secondary school because there is pressure on them to obtain a certain number of points if they wish to enter university or other third level institutions. Young people who decide to pursue a third level education course face enormous problems. In Cork such young people not only face a high standard but they also have a problem in trying to find accommodation in the city. Such pressures are over-burdening our young people. Having reached a certain level of education or having acquired a skill, our young people are justified in expecting a certain quality of employment; but unfortunately we are failing them in this respect.

Recently there have been statements from some people whom one would expect to know better. These statements were to the effect that if we fail to provide employment for young people they may resort to violence. We are all aware that this has happened in other places but the danger is that, if the fear is expressed often by people in responsible positions, young impressionable people may regard such activity as excusable in certain circumstances. Therefore, the less said about that the better.

I have no wish to be political in my first contribution, but the questioning of the commitment of this Government to the provision of jobs for young people must not go unanswered. The previous Government in their job-creation programme laid too much emphasis on the public sector in this context with the result that a great strain was put on the public purse by way of the creation of those non-productive jobs. If that policy had not been discontinued we would have found ourselves in a bankruptcy situation. I must refer also to the lack of commitment on the part of the previous Government to the provision of jobs in the past four years. The 1980 national understanding envisaged a net growth in total employment of 7,000 jobs. Instead of the predicted growth of 5,000 on the manufacturing side, there was a loss of 5,000 jobs in that area. Spokesmen on the other side of the House must accept that the previous Administration reneged in particular on the Irish trade union movement so far as the terms of the previous national understandings were concerned. I would go so far as to say that they reneged on their commitment to the extent of 40,000 jobs. This can be backed up by the CSO in their report of May 1981 in which they say that the guidelines for ensuring employment during 1980 were outlined to the extent of 14,400 jobs.

In the first national understanding the previous Government committed themselves to an effective planning strategy for industry which would require careful monitoring of changes likely to influence employment levels. They said that parties to the agreement accepted the desirability of establishing sectoral industrial committees which would assess the implications of technological marketing and related developments for future employment and for the efficiency and growth of the sector, and that the understanding was that these committees would be established before the end of 1979. However, no such committees were appointed either in 1979 or in 1980 and it was only in the run up to the 1981 election that there was any movement in that area.

Clause 5 of Part 1 of the 1980 agreement reads:

The Government undertake to prepare a comprehensive statement of the proposed measures and the necessary requirements for the achievement of full employment and greater social progress. An initial draft will be produced by the Government around the end of November, 1980 and will be discussed between the Government and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Employer and Industry Organisations....

In other words, an initial draft was to have been produced before the budget of 1981 whereas it was only in March, some months after the budget, that such draft was circulated.

In July, when the present Administration took over, unemployment was going out of control and the present estimates are that it could reach the appalling figure of 200,000 within the next 12 to 18 months. What is required now is a representative system of industrial planning and this is something that the Government intend introducing within the coming months.

I should like to refer briefly to the IDA, a body which I do not consider to be above criticism either. Down through the years they have produced highly optimistic estimates but all too often these estimates have been off target. In many instances the IDA have been too rigid in their approach to Irish people who seek grant aid for the purpose of setting up small businesses. From my very limited dealings with the Authority I have found that their approach varies, depending on who is seeking the subsidy. The IDA must become more flexible in respect of the needs of the service industries. Cork Corporation, for example, have produced a very detailed programme for inner city development. In the local plan for the Shannon area it is envisaged that small industries would be introduced into this part of the city thereby creating work and giving people the opportunity of coming back to live and work in the city. In the past number of months I have observed that the ESB and the IDA have discouraged the setting up of certain types of industries in these areas. Because of a rigidity in their approach the IDA cannot give grants since they are governed by statute or regulations. At the same time the organisation say they will do all they can to encourage employment in inner city areas. There is a vast potential in these areas for the creation of jobs for young people.

The Bill is welcome, but it will not cure the problem of youth unemployment. It has been said that this could be an expensive way of creating jobs but we must look at the Bill as a companion to the economic and social policy to be published. This is a scheme designed to introduce young people to the concept of work pending an improvement and upswing in our economy. From that point of view it is very important, because if young people are left without jobs for too long they become disenchanted and are thereby psychologically injured. I welcome the Bill.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Go raibh maith agat, a Theachta. Is mian liom comhgháirdeas a dhéanamh leat ar ocáid do chéad oráid.

Mr. Nolan

I, too, welcome this Bill. It is an umbrella under which to co-ordinate the work of the various agencies which are doing such excellent work in the Departments of Labour, Education and the Environment to provide training, employment and so forth for our young people. Having heard the Minister's introductory statement is there, I wonder, much that is new in the Bill? As I see it, it is an extension of existing employment incentives, existing training programmes based on the agencies already in existence. The Bill is more or less a copy of what is being done in other European countries with a problem of youth unemployment. There is nothing wrong with a copy if that copy is designed to benefit our young people.

I am very concerned about the 1 per cent levy. Levies have never been popular with any section of our community. The Minister will remember we had a 2 per cent levy on the farmers and a 1 per cent levy on someone else and, in the light of that experience, we know levies are not an acceptable form of taxation. While the Bill is to be welcomed as a co-ordinating measure it is quite obvious people have not properly considered the major problem of financing.

This is really a mini-budget designed to collect a sum of £63 million. There is the 1.5 per cent levy, the PRSI and we have heard about the 3.75 per cent levy on all incomes in excess of £89,500. Is it now proposed that every Bill that comes before the House will not be financed in the normal way through the annual budget from money collected by way of VAT, excise duty and taxation generally? That will be a new system for financing which will have a very serious effect and I am more than surprised the public generally have not so far adverted to this. Possibly the farmers had other problems last week organising their protest march to advertise their non-ability to repay loans and the high cost of input into their farms and did not realise what was happening here. I believe a good deal will be heard about this in the not too distant future and I would like the Minister to convey to the Government our disapproval of this method of financing.

In the short period during which I was Minister for Labour in the last Government we were very concerned about the problem of education. We are spending a colossal amount on education. It is my belief that our educational system is not run as it should be run. I have some experience of business and if one produces an article which is not required by the public one either goes bankrupt or one very quickly changes over to producing what the public want. In our educational system we may possibly be producing too many people with arts degrees.

How many arts degree people are today working as labourers? Deputy Daly referred to this. As far as the micro-chip is concerned we have had to import people with technical know-how. Prior to the change of Government the Minister for Education, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Industry and Commerce and I and others met many people in the educational sphere. We set up a pilot scheme in Athlone whereby parents, people from the regional colleges, the vocational and secondary schools were brought together in order to familiarise people generally with education and what is required. We got management to go into the regional colleges and schools once every six months to lecture the young people. I hope the Minister will continue this. I would also like to see co-operation between industry, the trade union movement, parents and students. I would like to see students given some practical training on the factory floor so that they would know exactly what the work is like instead of just sitting at desks all day.

Debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended at 1.30 p.m. and resumed at 2.30 p.m.