In accordance with the Order of the Seanad of 3 May, one-and-a-half hours has been set aside for this motion. As there are a number of Senators offering to speak the Chair suggests that the speeches be as brief as possible. If the House agrees, perhaps the final ten minutes might be reserved for the speech, in reply to the debate, by the mover of the motion.
Report of the Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities: Motion.
I propose that the same principle be applied to this as to Private Members' motions. In the case of such motions, half an hour has been agreed by the House for the proposer and a quarter of an hour for each speaker. I suggest to the House if only one-and-a-half hours is allowed for this that the proposer should have a quarter of an hour and each contributor ten minutes. There should be ten minutes allowed for reply. Is the House agreed on that proposal?
Agreed.
I move:
That Seanad Éireann takes note of the reports of the Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities on the Commission's proposals relating to youth employment which was laid before the Seanad on 3 May 1978.
I am pleased to commence the debate on this report by the Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities on the Commission's proposals relating to youth employment and to welcome the presence of the Minister of State for the debate. Because this is the first such debate, it might be helpful to recap briefly on the approach and the functioning of the Joint Committee. Last October the European Commission issued a communication on the whole question of youth employment in the EEC. It reviewed the size of the problem and the steps being taken in the different member States.
When the Joint Committee were reconstituted last December one of their first tasks was to parcel out to the sub-committee on social affairs the consideration of this communication. I am the Chairman of that sub-committee and we began to examine the contents of the European Commission's proposals and also their implications for Ireland. We received a memorandum from the Department of Labour and we had private meetings with officials of the Department, with the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and the CII. We also had written submissions from the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.
Some members of the Joint Committee visited the institutions of the European Community in Brussels from 19 to 21 March last and we had an opportunity to discuss the Commission's proposals with a senior official from the Directorate of Social Affairs. Subsequently, on 10 April 1978 the Commission issued formal proposals for a Council Regulation which would involve using the European Social Fund in this area. This I will deal with later. We decided to appendix to the report the existing aid from the Social Fund as this would assist members in considering this new proposal in the area of youth employment.
Turning to the report itself, the first task of the Joint Committee was to summarise the Commission's communication and analyse its proposals. The communication contained an assessment of the dimension of the problem at the European Community level, and I quote from part of paragraph 3 where it is stated:
The number of young people unemployed has risen in that period (that is from 1969 to date) from 400,000 to 2 million and the proportion of young people among the unemployed has risen from 24 per cent to 37 per cent although they represent only 17 per cent of the working population. The rate of unemployment of young persons aged under 20 is about three times higher than the overall average and that of persons between 20 and 25 years of age almost double the overall average.
It was clear therefore from the Commission's general assessment of the situation at the European Community level that it poses a very serious problem. However, the Joint Committee on looking at the youth unemployment position in Ireland draw attention to the fact that it is substantially graver, will endure for longer in Ireland, and so it poses for us an even greater challenge. At paragraph 5 we state:
Unemployment among the under 25 age group constituted 43.6 per cent of the total unemployment even though they represented only 30 per cent of the labour force. This compares unfavourably with the Community average of 37 per cent which is causing such great concern in all the member States.
We go on to point out that where it is estimated that in the other member states, because of their demographic structure and birth rate, there will be a decline in the numbers coming on the labour force from the mid-1980s our problem will continue into the 1990s and effectively to the end of the century.
We then reviewed the Commission's examination of the type of aids granted by the member states at the moment to try to cope with this problem of providing employment for young people. The Commission concluded that there were two common types of aid and summarised the action by member states. First of all, there are recruitment premiums, either in the form of direct payments to employers or a reduction in social security contributions and, second, subsidies for programmes involving the recruitment of young persons. The latest provisional estimate drawn up by the Commission shows that these national measures correspond to the annual expenditure of about 350 million units of account (UA) assisting the employment of some 220,000 young persons. That is against a background of two million young unemployed. In their earlier communication, and in their actual legislative proposals last April they focussed on two proposals which are contained in paragraph 11 of the report. These consisted of (1) an employment subsidy in respect of young persons under 25, newly recruited by undertakings in the production sector and, (2) in respect of wage costs, for young persons under 25 in connection with newly established programmes in the public sector. They would be eligible for expenditure from the Social Fund in these two areas for recruitment premiums and for employment programmes. The total amount of the wage subsidy would be £25 per person per week for the recruitment premium for a period of 26 weeks; and for the employment programme it would be £40.50 per person per week for 52 weeks.
The Commission's proposal recognises that certain regions have more acute problems than others and Ireland would benefit as one of the more deprived regions in this area and would get 55 per cent of the premium paid out of the Social Fund. In other words, in the case of the recruitment premium there would be £11 approximately per person per week from the Social Fund and in the case of the employment programme £22 per person would come from the Social Fund. The Joint Committee went on to assess the scope of these proposals. At paragraph 15 it is stated:
The Joint Committee regards the Community's commitment to the principle of aid for wage subsidies to promote employment as a most important development which it warmly welcomes. However it considers that the initial budgetary appropriations proposed are inadequate. When it is recalled that mem
ber States are already spending 350 million EUA annually the proposed Community contribution, welcome though it may be, is hardly likely to solve the problem.
I think it is fair to say that the views of the members of the Joint Committee was that the Community proposals were welcome because they were evidence of a definite willingness to engage in a new type of Community action in the area of subsidisation of wages for the under 25, but that the budgetary provisions were totally inadequate. There is also criticism in the report of the fact that it is proposed to use the existing Articles 4 and 5 of the European Social Fund rather than try to have a separate budgetary provision which would be commensurate with the problem. It is also clear from the Commission's proposals, from their analysis and from the size of the proposed Community aid that it could only be supplementary to aid at the national level and that it depends primarily on the action taken at national level.
One reason why the members of the Joint Committee wanted to have this report discussed in either or both Houses of the Oireachtas is to draw attention to the particular gravity of the problem here. It is significantly worse in Ireland at the moment than in any of the other member states and it will endure for much longer. This poses the greatest challenge to us as a people at the moment: how we are to absorb, provide jobs for, provide a future for the very significant numbers of young people coming on the labour force looking for work, looking for the possibility of making a life in Ireland in the next few years.
The report could not of course, examine in detail the approach in Ireland to employment creation. That is a matter for debate here. I believe that the Government White Paper in the emphasis it places on employment creation in the private sector totally fails to grasp, first of all, the dimension of the problem, second, the lack of attraction and incentive to the private sector to expand employment and third, the potential of this island, the enormous natural resources we have, the potential for extending the public sector in productive areas in order to create more employment. Since I will have an opportunity to reply at the end I should like to stop now and I welcome the views of other Members on the report.
There is just one final point: I think it is a very good precedent for the Seanad to note that the Joint Committee only adopted this report last Wednesday and already this evening we are debating it in the House, time having been given under the recent amendment of our Standing Orders. I should like to see this illustration of the kind of role the Seanad can play in examining the legislative initiatives being taken at European Community level which have very substantial implications here and in realising that in a vital area like youth employment —or youth unemployment—that the situation in Ireland is much graver than in any of the other European Community countries.
I second the motion.
Senator Robinson has sewn into the records of this House the extent of the problem of youth unemployment in the European Communities. In fact there are two million young people unemployed. Nearly 50 per cent of our unemployed population consists of young people and there is the worrying fact that because of the structure of our population the problem will take longer to get over and, possibly, looking at the worst side of it, things could get worse before they get better. I do not want to engage in political sniping, but I think I should express my fear that the latter might be the case because I think we have a Government trying to deal with this problem who are more concerned with their political image and lack the courage, imagination and political will needed to try to tackle this very serious problem.
I believe all political parties will have to pin their courage to the mast to try to adopt the type of radical approach that must be taken if we are to solve our unemployment problem, particularly our youth unemployment problem. The saddest fact of all is that after a general election all political parties tend to suggest that our unemployment problem was caused by the recession. I do not accept that theory and I have never accepted it. The fact is that during our boom economic years of the sixties and early seventies we had a serious and growing unemployment problem and the fact also is that for the past two years, or certainly 18 months, we have seen a tremendous increase in industrial and economic activity generally but we have not seen a corresponding impact on the unemployment figures. This indicates clearly that our unemployment problem does not stem simply from the recession. Of course the recession aggravated it but generally speaking if we are to try to come up with solutions we must strive to find the real reason.
I suggest we must look deeper into the structures of our society and into the political and economic system that has allowed unemployment to develop even before we had a recession. This may sound simplistic, but I believe that during our boom economic years developments that were described as technological progress, technological advances, threw people out of work. It is simplistic to say that machines and computers and other forms of technological advances threw people out of work. That is the only explanation why so many people were out of work even before we had a recession. When we come out of recession we may have some respite from the problem of unemployment and youth unemployment but unless we deal with the root cause of this we will not solve our unemployment problem. It may lie low for a while but ultimately it will increase and come back in our faces in the finish.
I welcome the concern of the European Commission on the question of youth unemployment but I feel the proposals will not be sufficiently well financed and I do not believe they are sufficiently fundamental even to begin to solve the real problem of unemployment. The changes that are required are great and will require fundamental changes in our society. The responsibility lies with the Government and all political parties and all politicians generally, the duty to make people more socially concerned and to make people more willing to allow a greater portion of our national wealth to be devoted to the creation of employment and particularly to the employment of young people.
The fact, for example, that it is good election tactics and electorally popular to abolish car tax cost this country millions of pounds. We could have used that money — we talked about it in this House today — to start draining the Shannon or other rivers. I have heard agricultural experts from my own part of the country reckon that the mid-west region could be drained for the amount of money that has been given back to the people in car tax, a tax that did not particularly bother people. It is that type of fundamental change we must strive to bring about and we can only do it if we have the political will to encourage people to become less materialistic in their attitudes. It is inevitable that with ever-increasing standards of living people require to sustain that standard of living with a greater share of the national cake, but we have a social responsibility in this which we have not discharged. I say that not only of this Government but of all political parties down through the years.
It is necessary in a debate like this to point to the social problems that arise because of unemployment, particularly among young people who have been out of work for one or two years after leaving school, who are bored and have not been trained educationally to deal with that type of situation. Ultimately, because of a lack of self-respect and of financial independence that all school children look forward to when they graduate from school, it leads them into trouble with the law. Anybody who attends Irish courts and particularly district courts will notice that time after time in the vast majority of cases the young people who are in trouble with the law are unemployed and without gainful occupation. That kind of thing should not be tolerated in our society. Police reports published in England in the last six or eight months have clearly drawn an analogy between the increasing crime rate and the number of young people unemployed.
That is the type of problem we will have unless we are prepared to deal with it in a fundamental fashion. It is a problem that will remain with us and get worse. I would urge people of all political persuasions and parties to adopt a realistic approach to it and try to inspire among people a lesser concern with materialistic considerations and bring about a fundamental change in our society which will enable everyone who wants a job to get it.
I am pleased to see this report which deals with an extremely important matter. There is one aspect which worries me and that is a tendency these days to talk about shifting money from the capital side of investment to the social side. The danger is that in our haste to do something about this desperate problem of the percentage of youth unemployed we would forget about the people who are already in employment. It is as important to protect existing employment as it is to create new employment. We had some discussion at the IMI Conference in Killarney about this and Dr. Walsh spoke about reappraising these policies.
We lost 58,000 jobs in manufacturing between 1972 and 1975. That is an indication of the threat to existing employment. We must be careful to keep up investment to protect those jobs. In the recent IDA plan, where they talk about the job creating targets, they mention that they are catering for a 7,000 decline in jobs as well. I am worried about ensuring that the figure would not be greater as a result of diverting money. It is with great enthusiasm that I see the EEC are going to make money available to help support directly employment at youth level. As the Irish situation is particularly bad, we will get 55 per cent under that proposal.
If we are to achieve the targets that have been set—there are some figures that indicate the nature of the problem —we would have to get our investment up to something like 37 per cent of the GNP by 1980. At the moment it is only about 33 per cent. That is why I want to sound a note of caution about money going into the social side without there being capital behind jobs to protect them. I quoted here recently an example of this and the magnitude of it. When you compare the Leyland Company with Toyota you find that in 1966 in the Leyland Company 76 per cent of the added-value produced by that company went in wages and salaries. That went to 106 per cent in 1976. For Toyota it was 44 per cent in 1966 and 40 per cent in 1976. Behind each employee in terms of capital investment in Leyand there was £206 and in Toyota £2,000. The market place determines the viability of jobs. Therefore we must be careful about the diversion of money. I am delighted that the EEC are making money available for direct employment subsidy. Operating as I do in the inner city where the youth problem is worse than anywhere else, I welcome it.
I read the report of the Joint Committee with mixed feelings. When one sees the dimensions of the unemployment problem as sketched in that report one must be pessimistic, particularly because of its extent and because its possible duration is longer than anywhere else in Europe in relation to the 20 years mentioned. If the problem continues at the same size for that length of time I do not think that length of time will be available to solve it. This society will not be as it is for that length of time with that cancer eating away at it.
One would welcome with optimism the efforts being made by the Commission to solve it. On reflection, these efforts are in the nature of placebos. That is all they can be termed: they are temporary payments to take people of the dole queues. Everyone welcomes work for people even though it may be only temporary. Nevertheless, we have to recognise it for what it is. It is a temporary placebo. What is to happen to the people who are recruited into employment on the basis of these subsidies from the Government cum EEC when the subsidies run out? One resort would be to continue these subsidies ad infinitium. Will it be socially possible to let these people go? If they cannot be let go who will pay for them? We do not want to be in the situation that Senator Mulcahy has referred to where for social reasons we would have our industries over-manned. If they are over-manned they will not be competitive and our last state will be just as bad as our first unless there is a radical rethink of attitudes towards the use of technology vis-á-vis manpower, and all our competitors go along with the policy of over-manning, to put it crudely.
As far as Europe is concerned that may be all right. One of the great threats to western society and one reason why this problem is likely to continue is the threat from the Third World and the Far East. If any of the the large Japanese industries decided to take on a corresponding competitor in Europe it could send it to the wall in a very short time. The level of efficiency, productivity and the figures quoted by Senator Mulcahy prove that. From the Third World countries the amount of energy and different cost factors enable these countries to compete competitively and on very strong terms with industry in Europe.
The whole future is extremely bleak. The bleakness extends over the capitalist world which by coincidence happens to be the free world. I wonder whether in the system of market economies which we have had in the West there will have to be a fundamental rethink about the whole structure or where will the answer lie.
The report on the Joint Committee in so far as it shows EEC thinking is depressing in this regard too, if all that the Community can suggest as a cure for this problem is the placebo of employment subsidy on a limited scale. Far more fundamental remedies will be needed if we are to retain our society as it is.
As a non-member of the Joint Committee, I would like to express appreciation of the clarity and brevity of this report, which brings out very clearly the disproportionate extent and probable long-duration of our youth unemployment problem. It is natural that if we saw financial assistance for this coming from the EEC we should want to have our share, and we have a better case than anybody for getting a big share. However, we should be cautious before becoming too warmly committed to wage subsidisation as a solution. I was taken aback by the wording in the Joint Committee's report, paragraph 15, expressing a warm welcome for the principle of temporary subsidisation of wages. It does not say "temporary" but what is involved is purely temporary subsidisation which leaves many basic problems unsolved. So I join with those who have said that we need a much more basic approach to the problem of finding employment, which problem reacts most on the growing numbers of young persons in our society. The solution lies along the road which the Government have proposed. Some of us will be expressing qualifications about the degree of the Government's reliance on global expansion of demand as a way of reaching full employment, but there is agreement that it is only by a global approach to promote, through increased investment and productivity, an increased output of saleable goods and services that we will have any firm or sure basis for solving the employment problem.
This wage subsidy in so far as the EEC is prepared to contribute to it is a purely temporary ad hoc expedient rather than a principle. Even if we are successful in claiming money for it, we would need to have a very well-thought out scheme about how we are going to use it. One has to try to work out whether we would be applying this help in the private sector or the public sector. If we apply it in the public sector, as Senator Robinson and some others seem to prefer, and I see plenty of scope for increased work there on improvement of our infrastructure, we will not have the same problems as if we try to apply it in the private sector and then try to find some criterion on which we can safely withdraw the subsidy as soon as EEC funds run out after a year. We, of course, will be contributing 50 per cent of the aid.
45 per cent.
Well, almost half of the aid. First of all, I cannot see offhand how one could differentiate between various private firms and decide just where this kind of help would be justifiable, and secondly, where it could be abruptly withdrawn after a year without ill effects and without giving the firms undue leverage on the State for a continuation of this support. If wage levels are impeding new employment, then a much more straightforward way of dealing with that problem is to try to persuade the trade unions generally to go easier on their demands for increased real wages. I see many pitfalls in this subsidisation idea. I do not want to be too negative about it, but my preference would still lie, first of all, in the more general approach, over a period of years, on which the Government are already launched. Secondly, if we are having ad hoc aids they should be for specialised training and for employment premiums and other means of getting over certain difficulties, such as social insurance contributions, that employers may have in employing new workers, rather than becoming too deeply committed to wage subsidisation as a principle.
I am pleased that Senator Whitaker is not convinced that premium payments will help the employers to create employment. If we are to encourage the creation of employment, particularly for the youth, it might be a better proposition if we provided that for anybody employed between the ages of 16 and 25 neither the employer nor the employee would have to pay a contribution to the stamp and that the rest of the employed would carry them. That would be an incentive for the employer which could well be considered.
I hope I live long enough, whether I am in this House or out of it, to see free enterprise or the capitalist system creating full employment. I will never be convinced that it will happen but I hope that some day somebody in the street will tap me on the shoulder and say, "You were wrong." Unemployment has become a very acute social problem in the developed capitalist countries. In the fifties and sixties we had youth unemployed and emigration as we have now, but the problem is much bigger now. Even though we appear to be acquiring all the trappings of a well-guided economy, as evidenced by our extensive statistics, our wonderful research, our budgets, special plannings and so on, from 1960 to 1970 we had 135,000 people forced to emigrate from this country where profits and wages were high. We have failed in the past to bring about full employment and there does not seem to be any indication that we are going to do any better in the future.
There is talk of more techniques, better methods of work, reorganisation, and so forth. These do not create jobs; they reduce them. There were people outside Leinster House today, representing the textile industry workers. The textile industry is on its knees and cannot provide employment.
Leadership in the creation of employment must be through the public sector, because control is exercised more easily over the public sector than over private enterprise. When that is realised and admitted, then possibly we will see our way forward towards creating employment. When private enterprise talk about unemployment they are talking about an acceptable level of unemployment and do not really mean full employment. There is an unwarranted confidence in the initiative of private enterprise. Even when the Fianna Fáil Government were going out of power in what seemed to be a good time, and although there was emigration, there were still 73,000 people unemployed.
Referring to the White Paper, we have had programming before. We are not going to have any planning in the White Paper. What we are going to have there is another effort at totalling up future activities. Mention has been made of the grants and so forth from the EEC. I do not think there is anyone in this House, who can point out any major industrial or economic development over the past 25 years that sprang from the sole initiative and action of private enterprise. There always has to be public or State intervention and State aid, and the State has to be involved. We do not seem to have the type of private entrepreneur who will go the whole hog with it. If evidence can be produced that they have increased employment on their own it will be then possible for the Government to give conviction to the argument that the private enterprise system can do it. We are pressing ahead on the same basis as we did in the fifties and the sixties and that failed to produce jobs then.
The inducements and aids offered to private enterprise are the most attractive in the world, as they were then in the fifties and sixties. The entrepreneurs were protected then with tariff walls which the Irish consumer had to pay for, and then they sold out to big institutions. These were the people who were going to create employment for us. Therefore I say that the private sector cannot do it alone, although I am not saying that they cannot do a good job. With all the inducements we gave in the fifties and sixties we got absentee industrialists instead of absentee landlords. I do not think we are away from that now.
I am not attacking private enterprise for the sake of attacking it. It is a plea in the only way I know how to plead, and I say to the Government in desperation, "Do not rely unduly on the private enterprise system to solve your problems in this terrible period because that is not the way to solve them." We are going to need over 30,000 jobs a year and we have to clear the present backlog of about 140,000 people, and the only way to tackle this is to adopt the attitude that it is not too abnormal, it is in managable proportions.
I commend the Joint Committee for this very useful and informative document. It underlines the gravity of the problem of the unemployed under the age of 25 illustrated by statistics which have already been summarised by Senator Robinson. The Commission's legislative proposals to combat youth employment by making direct contributions should be welcomed. It marks a new departure and while the sums envisaged may fall short of expectations, I think, nevertheless, they should be welcomed.
I wish to make just a few, very brief additional comments. In particular I welcome the suggestions in paragraph 17 of the report where the Joint Committee believe that the cause of increased youth employment could be advanced if the mobility of labour could be improved among technically and professionally qualified and experienced persons in the under 35 age group. In many enterprises there are creative, highly qualified people in positions where their creativity and potential are not fully utilised. If the mobility proposed in the report, could be achieved, such people could exercise their initiative and potential in setting up new enterprises and in generating further employment. This, of course, would fit in rather neatly with the new incentives provided by the IDA for enterpreneurs.
On the somewhat vexed issue of capital-intensive versus labour-intensive industry it should be stressed that the IDA are concerned with job creation and it is worth remembering that given our geographical location on the fringe of Europe we do need a very attractive package of both capital and tax incentives to attract industry. We are not located in the heartland of industrial Europe with its teeming millions and special measures are necessary in our case to attract industry.
I share the gratification expressed by other Senators that we have had an opportunity of debating the Joint Committee's reaction to the Commission's proposals and as one who has no more than one occasion criticised the procedural approach in this House I am very glad that in the last few weeks we seem to be making some headway at last. I take this opportunity as one who is not on the Committee, and who I suppose would not be very welcome on the Committee, of expressing my appreciation of the Committee's work on what is a highly onerous and complex task.
What can one say about youth unemployment that has not been already said? Senator Hillery spoke about the gravity of the situation. I am speaking about the horror of the situation. I am by temperament an optimist, though I am told that is somewhat unusual for an historian, but it is very hard nowadays not to feel a sinking of the heart at what lies before us in this matter of youth unemployment. This is no time to prophesy doom, Cassandra-like; that is an easy enough task, but it is very difficult to have any optimism about the future in this regard as a citizen when one walks the streets. In Kildare Street today there is a demonstration from Youghal and the members of that deputation tell me that one of their chief concerns is not only present redundancies but the several hundreds of young people from the schools who will come on the employment market at the end of this academic year.
Many of us are parents of employable children in their late teens. Some of us are fortunate enough to have them placed. To the others what can we say when they ask us why is there not employment in Ireland? We may say this is relatively a poor country, or this is not a developed country, and we find frank disbelief in their faces. Any teacher must feel a sense of despondency but particularly in our universities this must be very strong because graduate unemployment is very much a part of the general problem. When you face a class of 120 students in their final degree year or when on conferring day you look at a packed Aula Maxima you wonder what the future holds for them. Above all, as public representatives it is our peculiar responsibility to say what we can and do what we can to improve matters.
It is news to me that the youth unemployment problem in the EEC is relatively a grave one, but again our figure of 43.6 per cent — which is the unemployment figure in the under-25 group — of total unemployment compared with their relatively light 37 per cent indicates again how our problems are much worse than the general European problems. It is some consolation that member states of the EEC have their own problems but I echo the reservations of other Senators who while welcoming what Senator Cooney called the placebos offered to us by the EEC, nevertheless find that the budgetary appropriations are inadequate and that they are placebos. But what can you expect from the EEC? It is a community where the unrestrained rule of market forces in the economy, the profit motivation, rules supreme, indeed, that constitutes perhaps the rationale of the European Economic Community.
Therefore in the end we have to look after ourselves in this country. We have a Government after all who were elected virtually on the pledge, if not to end unemployment, certainly to improve the position out of all recognition. Reference is made in this document to the fact that our problems are likely to last longer than the general run of our colleagues in the EEC. I take it that what is behind that, partly at least, is the fact that the birth-rate in this country is greatly in excess of the average European rate and it may well happen that in ten or 15 years' time our European partners may be gently nudging us to take the same kind of measures of family limitation which we now condescendingly give to the Third World.
Like Senator Harte I do not believe that the private sector can offer us any hope. Every day that I take my obligatory interest in public affairs and try to understand economic matters—and sometimes I am not altogether sure that economists themselves understand the economy — I become more and more convinced that the private sector is interested primarily in profits, in rationalisation, and therefore more and more inevitably in modern technology resulting in redundancy.
This morning we were told that the Bank of Ireland had made a profit of £43 million in this last year and that that was a 32 per cent rise in the profits of that bank group alone over last year. In view of that kind of situation and in view of the blatant disparity of wealth and poverty which exists at every hand's turn, how can you seriously tell a teenage child that this is a poor country which cannot give him employment? Again I do not want to be dramatic, I do not want to be a Cassandra, but it seems to me that the choice soon before us in this country is either that we constitutionally and gradually take over public control of the economy in all aspects or have it done for us by revolutionary movement in the streets.
Before addressing myself to the contents of the report and the motion before us I would like to refer briefly to a point made by Senator Robinson in proposing the motion when she referred to this debate being a very good precedent. My attendance here tonight at this debate is not to be regarded as a precedent for such attendance by any Minister or Ministers of State in the event that similar debates in the Seanad on reports of this Committee are held in the future.
I would refer to some of the points that have been raised by Senators. Senator Molony started off by speaking about his desire not to get involved in political sniping, and then proceeded to refer to the emphasis of this Government on image rather than substance. Of course, the facts are the complete opposite. He then proceeded to make his contribution and to connect youth unemployment with the Government's decision to abolish tax on cars up to a certain horse-power. I took it from Senator Molony's comments that, in the unlikely event of his party ever again being involved in a Government in this country, he would be supporting the reintroduction of such a car tax.
I agree totally with Senator Mulcahy that job maintenance must be a cornerstone of any Government's plans for an attack on the problem of employment, whether of youth or otherwise. I had the pleasure of speaking at a debate recently in this House when the present Irish goods campaign was being debated. One of the main reasons for that campaign is the maintenance of existing jobs as well as the creation of future jobs. Job maintenance has to be a central factor of any Government's plans for the elimination of unemployment.
Senator Harte said that he had no confidence in the ability of the private sector generally to tackle the unemployment situation and this, of course, was re-echoed by Senator Murphy alone. We could go into a long philosophical debate on that but time would not permit me to get involved in that tonight. However, on some future occasion I look forward to debating that subject with the Senator and with Senator Murphy.
Senator Brian Hillery made a very important point when he referred to the work of the IDA. Let there be no doubt about it that in the IDA we have an internationally recognised body which, as far as industrial promotion is concerned, is superior to any such body in any country in the world. We are very proud of the work that is being done by the IDA in what is becoming an ever more competitive field. That is in the field of attracting foreign capital and investment for job creation purposes into any country.
I am delighted that Senator Hillery has given me the opportunity to refer to the work of the IDA. This country owes much to the direction of the IDA and the field work done by the IDA around the world. Yesterday I had the honour of opening an American factory in Trim. I was very pleased to hear the chairman of that international organisation praise the work of the IDA. They had honoured every single commitment they had made to him with regard to finance and to dates.
Senator Murphy referred to the protest outside the House by the workers from Youghal. I met a delegation from the workers this evening together with the public representatives from the area. I listened sympathetically to the points raised and I can assure this House that the matters raised will be considered by the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy and the points will also be brought to the notice of the IDA. In connection with the Youghal protest I would not agree with Senator Harte's view as far as the future of the textile industry is concerned. I would see a bright future for the textile industry in the years ahead.
The problem of youth unemployment is one which affects all member states of the Community. It is entirely appropriate, therefore, that the Community should take action to supplement the efforts of member states in dealing with this matter. Indeed, the Community would be failing in its duty if it failed to take such action. The proposals put forward by the Commission contain a few different elements, the most important of which concerns the proposals for the extension of the European Social Fund assistance to measures aimed at providing employment for young people.
More specifically, the Commission proposes that the social fund should be used to support the cost of recruitment premiums for young people in the private sector and for special programmes to recruit young people for newly created jobs in the public sector. The Government fully support the principle behind these proposals and, indeed, the Government manifesto set out a specific objective incorporated in these proposals, that the social fund should focus more on relieving unemployment particularly among young people.
We regard the proposed breakthrough to support direct job creation from the fund as particularly important. The Government, while they support the proposal, would see little or no point in extending the scope of the social fund if the new measures were to be introduced at the expense of assistance for existing measures which are already subvented by the fund. This is a point that has been previously made by Senator Robinson. Accordingly, the Government regard it as essential that resources to finance the new measures be made available to the fund. The Commission was also suggesting that the fund resources should be augumented. The Government would not disagree with the Joint Committee's view that the initial budgetary appropriations proposed by the Commission are inadequate but they recognise the political difficulties of securing agreement at Community level to the provision of amounts higher than those suggested by the Commission.
In Ireland we will be well placed to take advantage of the proposed new fund assistance. Senators will be aware that we already have in operation a scheme of recruitment subsidies which involves the payment of premiums to employers who recruit unemployed people under 20 years of age as additions to their work force. At the moment employers receive £14 per week for about six months for each eligible young worker that they take on. Already, employers have applied under the scheme for premiums in respect of about 2,500 young people. Many young persons under 25 years qualify under our general employment incentive scheme which provides premiums of £20 per week for about six months.
Special public sector job-creation programmes of the type envisaged by the Commission are also being developed in Ireland. For example, as a result of a recommendation which the Employment Action Team made to the Minister for Labour this year, the Government allocated £4 million to local authorities to enable them to recruit young people on a programme of environmental improvement.
Recruitment for this programme is going ahead at the moment. Similarly, the Department of Education offered grants to youth and sports organisations to enable them to employ young people on desirable community works which would not otherwise be undertaken.
The community youth training programme organised by AnCO is another example. This already qualifies for social fund aid on account of its training content. As regards the comments in the Joint Committee report about the staff of the National Manpower Service, steps have been taken to expand the staff of the service. An open competition for placement officers has just been completed. It is hoped to recruit from this at least 30 additional placement officers over the next few months.
I touched on the scale of employment challenge, particularly for young people, facing us in the future. It seems likely that we will have to consider supplementing our traditional job-creation programmes with special schemes designed to alleviate the situation further. The availability of EEC assistance for special public sector projects will make the development of such projects more attractive and render possible a higher scale of operations than if domestic resources had to be relied on. These projects can offer lasting benefits to the community. At the same time they can offer the unemployed a worth-while experience of working life and perhaps develop some basic skills.
It is important that the Commission's proposals should be decided upon as quickly as possible and I would hope that the target date set for their acceptance at the end of next month will be achieved. I am sure that all Senators will join me in that hope. The comments in this Joint Committee report will, of course, be borne in mind by the Government in relation to further consideration by the various EEC bodies of youth employment problems.
Like those who have spoken before me I too welcome the opportunity given to Seanad Éireann to discuss this Report of the Joint Committee on the Secondary Legislation of the European Communities. I would like to join Senator Robinson in thanking the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and the Confederation of Irish Industry for their stated commitment that they would provide assistance in regard to this report.
All of us will agree that there are many social and economic problems confronting this country. Of great importance is the fact that so many of our young people are unemployed. That brings with it many social problems, other than having no job. Senator Molony referred to the problem of crime. I think there is a direct correlation between the fact that so few young people have jobs and the high rate of crime in our community.
Senator Cooney and Senator Molony seem to think the problem of youth unemployment is something that has existed in Ireland only since last June, since the new Government took office. I am sure he is aware, as I am aware, that the Government's manifesto and the subsequent action by the Government, the setting up of the Employment Action Team, the allocation of £20 million in the recent budget to the specific provision of jobs for young people, are indications of the seriousness with which this Government are looking at the whole problem of youth unemployment.
Section 5 of the report draws attention to the EEC labour force survey carried out here in 1975. It shows that 50 per cent of the population in Ireland is under 25 and that 43.6 per cent of the unemployed are young people. The problem in Ireland is much more serious than that in other countries where the Community average is only something in the region of 37 per cent.
It is significant that Seanad Éireann should give the lead in discussing this very important report of the Joint Committee. Since 1969, with one year an exception, the numbers of young people under 25 who were unemployed throughout the Community has increased. The percentage of the total work force unemployed has gone up from 24 to 37 per cent. It is very easy to trot out figures and talk in terms of two million unemployed young people throughout Europe but we must look at the reality behind the problem. We must ask ourselves why there are so many young people unemployed. The joint report gives three reasons. It says that it is partly due to the recession, partly due to the increased numbers of young women entering the labour force and partly due to the number of young people as a whole entering the labour force.
In my view, there are other reasons. One of the reasons is that so many highly educated and highly qualified young people are entering the labour force. Their expectations are very high. They are not satisfied with taking any job. This is regrettable because recently, when I spoke to a number of industrialists, I was horrified to discover that they could not find young girls to work in factories. Factory work may not be the most pleasant job but the message I would like Seanad Éireann to send out to our young people, particularly the young people who are looking for a job, is to take any job because a bad start in life is dreadful. I would rather see a person with any job, no matter what that job, rather than have no job at all. Let them not be too choosey. Let them take the job that is available if the job they would like is not to be had.
In this country in recent years there has been too much emphasis on academic training and too little on technical training. The result has been that there has been a great shortage of people with the necessary skills to set up the industries which we need so badly in Ireland. I would like to draw Senator Harte's attention to the fact that it is not public enterprise alone which will solve the problem. It is a joint problem for public and private enterprise together.
One of the ways the Community can help is by allocating more money to young people to set up industry. Initiative and innovation must be rewarded and must be assisted. This alone will solve the problem. We must give young men and women with the necessary flair the finance to set about building up industry so that our young people can have more jobs.
Senator Harte also criticised the fact that the Government were not placing enough emphasis on the role of the public sector in the provision of jobs. The public sector can go so far but most of the jobs available through the public sector are jobs that are not productive and I would prefer to see the emphasis on the private sector where the jobs are productive.
Finally, I want to say that the problem of youth unemployment is a Community problem, which must be tackled by the Community. The moneys allocated since 1975, 280 million units of account, are not sufficient. The Community has a role to play in seeing that the most serious problem confronting it is tackled very soon. I would like more Community money made available for the purpose of providing jobs for our young people. Side by side with that, national governments, particularly the Government in Ireland where it is a very serious and crucial problem, must provide the necessary incentives and aids so that our young people can have a real chance in life to secure a job.
One aspect of this problem which does not usually get the attention it deserves and to which I was glad to hear Senators Cooney and Harney refer is the effect of long-term unemployment in areas of social concern. A symptom of the unease caused by continuous and enforced idleness is the high degree of absenteeism which exists at present in our post-primary schools in urban areas. This is the subject of a report brought out by a subcommittee of Dublin City Council early in 1976 to which I have referred before in the House and to which I shall refer at any available opportunity I get because it is very important. It says that:
the cause of absenteeism is that young people no longer feel that the curriculum in the educational system offers them the practical help they need at this point in time.
It seems, therefore, that many young people see no point in belonging to an educational system which fails to provide them with the help they need to face up to being part of the dole queue when they leave school. The system has failed to respond to the stimulus of large-scale youth unemployment.
Young people are entitled to expect and even demand that the educational system should respond to this stimulus. We are being less than honest if we continue to permit a system to exist that does not prepare them adequately for the future in which the spectre of long-term unemployment will be the most significant feature.
This first debate on a report of the Joint Committee on European Community Secondary Legislation has achieved at least part of the objective and completed the cycle involved in having a scrutiny committee on European Community legislation. The report has alerted Senators to the problem in the European Community context, and to the still graver dimension of the problem in Ireland both because of the higher percentage unemployment of young people and the fact that it will extend for a longer period. The Minister, and every Senator who spoke, referred to the gravity of the problem and its longer continuity here.
It was a very interesting debate because it threw up an ideological divide which must be there in examining the priorities and emphasis in coping with unemployment. That ideological divide will become sharper as the problem worsens.
Senator Cooney and Senator Molony raised the question that it is possible that the capitalist system would fail to cope with the problem. I would go further and say we are seeing the death of the capitalist system or the free market system as the norm in western Europe and as the political culture in which we grew up. It is very difficult in Ireland, because we are very conservative in our attitudes, to quite comprehend what we are seeing. I firmly believe that we are witnessing the slow death of capitalism and that it has gone beyond revival. It is in that kind of context that we must examine both the scope of the problems and the way of coping with them. That is not to deny — certainly for an interim period — that we must look both to the private sector and to the public sector for the initiative and the means to cope with the problem.
I must take issue with the Senators, particularly Senator Harney and other Senators, who seemed to view the public sector as in some way "unproductive" or potentially less productive than the private sector. I cannot understand the basis of this. It is precisely when we expand the State enterprise involvement in the profitable sectors of the economy and in productive employment that we will begin to cope with the dimension of the problem.
It might be useful to refer to our failure down the years to cope with the unemployment problem, even at times of growth and expansion in the economy. There is a need for a very radical change of approach, not to undermine existing employment or penalise the private sector, but to realise that it is completely unfair and indeed resented by the private sector to expect too much from it in employment creation. It is very interesting to see the way the private sector is running away from the attempt by the Government to pin them as the main job creating sector. It is neither realistic nor is it going to help us to resolve this immense problem. I would like to quote from the analysis in the report on youth employment in Ireland submitted by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to members of the sub-committee. That report stated:
The White Paper expects that these growth rates will result in an average annual net increase of 29,000 in non-agricultural employment. The major contribution to this target is expected to come from manufacturing industry where an average growth rate of 13 per cent over the 1978-80 period to give a net increase in manufacturing employment of 13,500 each year. What must be realised, of course, is that private enterprise never realised that level of growth in employment in the past. In the 1960s the net increase in manufacturing employment was only approx. 3,000 on average each year. In the period 1970-77, the net increase in manufacturing employment only totalled between 2,000 and 3,200 workers. This is less than one-fifth of the net increase in manufacturing employment required on average each year if we are to reduce the unemployment figure to 50,000 by 1986. Even the last performance of the manufacturing sector to date during the boom years of 1973 and 1977, only came to half of what is required.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions draws the conclusions from this that there is a need for a significant increase in State enterprise involvement in profitable sectors of the economy. It calls for that kind of involvement immediately: for a national development corporation that would be able to exploit the resources, to command the structures which we need because there is just no way in which we can continue as we are at the moment and expect some magic change in the volume of job creation which we have had in the past. We must be able to predict patterns for the future from the experiences of the past. We must realise that, as has been said by a number of Senators, unless we do commit ourselves as a very young country to radical change in our approach both to job creation and also to taxation and distribution of wealth within the country — a very radical approach indeed— then we will see a worsening of the social conditions, a growing disparity between those who have wealth and the poorer sections and a switching off of the generations who fail to get employment here.
One aspect was not mentioned and I feel I ought to bring it in at this stage. That is the possible dramatic increase in the emigration figures. We know that these figures are increasing as it is, but if the Commission in its communication, as summarised in this report, points to the tapering off of the problem in other European Community countries by the eighties and we still have a graver problem right into the nineties and to the end of the century, what are we going to do? Are we going to see another drain of our young people, of very dramatic proportions, to service industry in the inner triangle of the European Community, Germany and the Netherlands and so on? That is a very crucial problem which is posed both by the analysis of the Commission and by the report itself.
I welcome the fact that the Minister feels that the report will be of assistance to the Government in bringing home the dimensions of the problem here and arguing, as Senator Whitaker said, a special case for Ireland in relation to the size of our unemployment problem, the unusually high birth rate and therefore the longer continuity of this problem.
I would like to thank the number of Senators who waited till this somewhat late hour in the Seanad in order to contribute to this debate. This is a very good first example of the Seanad completing the democratic cycle by noting and debating the report of the Joint Committee which has called to its attention a particularly grave and urgent problem.
Question put and agreed to.