Richard Bruton
Question:19 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Enterprise and Employment the initiatives, if any, he plans to keep our highly qualified third level graduates living and working in Ireland.
Ceisteanna — Questions Oral Answers - Graduate Employment Initiatives.
Paul Bradford
Question:45 Mr. Bradford asked the Minister for Enterprise and Employment the initiatives, if any, he plans to keep our highly qualified third level graduates living and working in Ireland.
Austin Currie
Question:68 Mr. Currie asked the Minister for Enterprise and Employment the initiatives, if any, he plans to keep our highly qualified third level graduates living and working in Ireland.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 19, 45 and 68 together. The Government's plans for job creation and economic development are contained in the Programme for Government, the Government's response to the Culliton report, in the draft National Plan and in specific initiatives like the restructuring of certain State agencies which the Government has taken since coming to office. All of these have been discussed extensively in public. They are designed to improve the framework for economic development in the short and longer term and to lead to job creation.
In relation to third level graduates, there are specific schemes like the FÁS graduate placement programme; the financial graduates programme and the European orientation programme. Expenditure under the EOLAS grant-in-aid and the science and technology development programmes funded through my Department's Vote have a more focused bearing on graduates in the engineering and applied sciences areas. There is a number of schemes which include for example: funding for some 260 graduates this year to proceed to M.Scs and Ph.Ds; 200 graduates recruited each year under the TECH-START scheme to help industry improve their technology; 50 technologists under the technology management programme to help companies identify major technological hurdles needing correction; more than 150 projects under way under the higher education-industry co-operation scheme designed to create greater interaction between third level and industry; and new projects approved by EOLAS under the basic research scheme.
Overall, some £43.4 million is being spent under the science and technology programme this year as against £27 million in 1992. The 1993 figure includes £23 million for the industry research and development initiative. Within the EOLAS grant-in-aid itself, the amount of funding provided for basic research is slightly up in 1993. All these funds are applied, directly or indirectly, to increasing the level of research and development activity in Ireland; in improving the rate of technology take-up in Irish industry and generally in improving national competitiveness. At the end of the day the best underpinning for lasting success on the jobs front is our ability to compete against other countries who themselves are continually upgrading.
Is the Minister aware that surveys by the Higher Education Authority indicate that 28 per cent of our graduates have to go overseas in search of work in the first year after graduation, that means that 7,500 graduates had to emigrate within a year of completing their course during the period of the National Development Plan 1989-93, among them 1,300 engineers, 1,200 business graduates and 1,000 science graduates. Given that those 7,500 people carried with them £200 million worth of taxpayers' investment, does he agree that we should make a much greater effort to find placements for them in Irish business both in the services and industrial sectors because they are the seed capital of Ireland's future?
I am aware, broadly speaking, of the statistics to which the Deputy refers but I refer him to the historical precedent which, over a long period, saw the short term migration of such graduates for necessary experience abroad. If the analysis was available to him, I think the Deputy would find that a great deal of the migration to which the survey refers was voluntary, which leads to people getting the necessary experience abroad which they subsequently bring back with enhanced value for the Irish taxpayer.
I beg to differ. Any examination of Ireland's emigration figures over the past eight to ten years would show a steady attrition. During the course of the National Development Plan, 98,000 emigrated, 90 per cent of whom are young people. There is no evidence that they are returning in large numbers. Would he not agree, therefore, that in the course of the draft National Development Plan we will have to develop effective placements not only for our graduates, about whom we have statistics, but for the very many highly trained people from other educational institutions who are going to contribute to the economies of other countries and not to the future of this country.
The Deputy's question refers to graduate migration and I suggest there is a pattern, which has been well established over a long period, of short term migration for graduates of engineering, science and architecture. This is borne out when one asks the placement officers in any of our five medical schools, or our three engineering schools where we have been producing from 1930 onwards consistently in excess of the demands of the local economy.
I suggest that in the period over the past five years there are now more programme initiatives available to facilitate graduate placement at home than at any time in the past. I take on board the points the Deputy makes and we will try to get more qualitative analysis and statistics to ensure that we do not suffer unnecessary loss.