Vol. 470 No. 3
14 Mr. E. Ryan asked the Minister for Tourism and Trade the action, if any, being taken to encourage unemployed people to take up available jobs in the tourist industry; and if he will ensure that more training places are made available for unemployed people. [18754/96]
CERT, the agency for training and recruitment for the tourist industry, actively encourage, by way of national publicity, unemployed people to train for employment in the tourism industry. They run a range of training programmes specially for the unemployed which offer excellent opportunities to obtain worthwhile employment. For example, placement rates on completion of CERT training are over 80 per cent and in some regions are as high as 100 per cent.
In 1995 CERT trained more than 1,600 unemployed people: their target for the lifetime of the Operational Programme for Tourism 1994-1999 is almost 10,000. The adequacy of this target will be re-assessed in the context of the upcoming mid-term evaluation of the operational programme, having particular regard to developments in the industry since the launch of the programme.
Cert advises that in order to make training more attractive to the unemployed, from this year on certification at elementary level is being provided by the National Tourism Certification Board for those following training programmes for the unemployed. This will allow those who successfully complete elementary training to register for craft level national certification and thus create a career ladder for themselves. In a separate development, elementary certification for those who train `on-the-job' will also be available from 1997.
