Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 10 Dec 1981

Vol. 96 No. 14

Youth Employment Agency Bill, 1981: Second Stage.

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

Minister for Labour (Mr. Kavanagh)

The Programme for Government 1981-86, contains as a major commitment the establishment at an early date of a Youth Employment Agency.

The establishment of the agency has to be looked at against the persistent growth of youth unemployment in Europe since the early seventies. This position obtains despite various policy interventions in favour of young people by Governments. There are, unfortunately, relatively few exceptions to this depressing picture and in 1980 the unemployment rates for the 15-25 year age group were as high as 15.1 per cent, 15 per cent and 24.8 per cent in the UK, France and Italy. In the seven largest OECD countries, youth unemployment accounted for a staggering 42 per cent of total unemployment.

The best estimates of youth unemployment in Ireland are those available from the live register with the most recent figures being for November 1981. On that date, there were 36,839 persons under 25 years of age unemployed. This represents 27.6 per cent of the total unemployed. Our data on youth employment and unemployment are bad but I hope that a significant improvement will result in our information as a spin-off from the proposals which I will be putting forward later.

Unemployment among young people is high because unemployment is high in the community overall. The level of unemployment has risen rapidly in the present recession which began at the end of 1979. By the end of November, seasonally adjusted unemployment was 58 per cent higher than in December 1979. Youth unemployment has risen even faster; while seasonally adjusted figures are not available, the actual number of unemployed aged under 25 is now more than 80 per cent higher than in January 1980. Experience points to young workers faring relatively badly when there is a sharp, sudden rise in overall unemployment.

In addition to the present unsatisfactory position regarding youth employment, account must also be taken of the future demographic picture and its implications for the labour force. The most recent labour force projections by the ESRI point to an annual average increase in the region of 1.5 per cent to 1.8 per cent in our labour force. Around 65,000 young people leave our educational system annually and most look for work. Retirements from the labour force are nowhere near this figure.

The implications for policy of the present level of youth unemployment and the expected labour force increase to which I have referred are many, but two major conclusions can be drawn. First, even to keep the number unemployed at its present level means that we must create more jobs than are being lost. Secondly, our labour force is becoming younger and those entering it have different qualifications, attitudes and aspirations from those who are leaving it. I am not overlooking the fact that our middle-aged and older workers are faced with similar problems. In the present difficult and uncertain economic climate the analysis which I have presented, particularly the sheer scale of the youth employment challenge, clearly points to the need for special solutions.

The main thrust of our efforts to reduce youth unemployment must be a sustained attack on the scourge of unemployment at all levels in our society. This requires continued growth in our exports of goods and services. Increased exports are vital in view of the sharp deterioration in our balance of payments position in the last few years. Export growth must also be the engine for the creation of new jobs which will be needed in the years to come.

We will, of course, continue with the existing and new forms of job creation centred on the activities of the IDA and other development bodies and on the expansion of our productive capacity by increased sales in home and export markets. Research has shown that around 50 per cent of the jobs generated by the IDA are filled by young people. The National Development Corporation when established will constitute a major new initiative of significant long-term importance in the task of increasing productive employment. It is envisaged that much of the corporation's investments will be directed to the new growth sectors where progress in the past has been inhibited by a lack of risk capital, but profitable investments in the more mature industries will also be considered.

Balanced and self-sustaining output and employment growth will do much to improve the youth unemployment situation. It will, however, still be necessary to adopt special measures to overcome the problems that are particular to young people. There is a clearly identifiable youth labour market.

A range of training and employment opportunities exist for helping young people arising from initiatives by successive Governments. The present position in relation to such schemes is that roughly 20,000 young people will be catered for in 1981. The schemes concerned are the National Manpower Service work experience programme with 5,000 young people participating in 1981; AnCO's general training programme with 12,000 young persons, including 2,000 young apprentices participating; and the Department of Education's temporary grants scheme and the Department of the Environment's environmental improvements scheme with 1,000 participating. Allied to measures taken within the educational system, such as the introduction and expansion of pre-employment courses, these programmes constitute a sizeable effort to aid young people.

I would make several points in relation to existing efforts. Firstly, the continuing high level of youth unemployment indicates that more needs to be done. Secondly, the schemes are not properly co-ordinated. They were introduced on a piecemeal basis in response to emerging problems, in many cases to meet what was seen as a temporary need. Differences in allowances and wages between schemes, and lack of co-ordinated promotion of programmes, have led inevitably to a degree of confusion in the minds of those intended to benefit.

Finally, I think it is fair to say that existing schemes do not have a sufficient impact on the position of disadvantaged young people. Part of the problem has been one of identification of the young people concerned. Teenagers with the most pressing employment problems may also be difficult to cope with in structured training and experience courses. Programme sponsors have made considerable efforts to respond to these difficulties, but I feel that further initiatives are called for.

These points serve to illustrate the need for the initiative being taken in the form of this Bill and the setting up of the agency. I have discussed the proposed agency with, among others, representatives of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Federated Union of Employers and I have taken their views into consideration in formulating the proposals before Senators.

Certain conclusion can be arrived at from what I have been saying up to now. Firstly, we have a sizeable number of our young people unemployed. Secondly, labour force projections point to a continuing situation of more young entrants to the labour force than retirals. Thirdly what has been done up to now is not an adequately comprehensive and co-ordinated response to the problem. It does not cover the entire transition from school to full integration in the workforce and it is of limited benefit to disadvantaged young people.

The Government in their programme for 1981 to 1986 recognised these considerations and the need for special provisions to deal with the acute problem of youth employment. The Government therefore decided to establish without delay a Youth Employment Agency to integrate and radically extend the schemes that exist under the separate auspices of a number of State enterprises. The Government intend the new agency to move as rapidly as it physically can to the point where an additional 20,000 young people will be catered for by existing and new schemes.

I repeat this figure of 20,000 since some confusion arose in the Dáil over the number of young people to be assisted by the agency and the type of operations involved. The argument has been that the agency will cater for much the same numbers of young people as in 1981. I should like to put the record straight on these two points.

As regards numbers, it is my intention that about 40,000 young people will be catered for in 1982. This will be an increase of 20,000 or, in fact, a doubling of what is being done for young people at present in 1981. In addition, the agency will intensify their efforts on behalf of those who are more than six months out of work; it is among this group that the most acute problems of disadvantage are concentrated.

These measures will be designed to ensure that no young person is left without some form of work, training or work experience within a relatively short period of having completed his or her education.

I should like now to give the House an indication of my proposals for dealing with the problem. The Youth Employment Agency Bill before us is intended to implement these proposals. In brief, the Bill has two parts dealing firstly with the establishment of the agency itself, and secondly, with the collection of the levy.

The first part embraces sections 2 to 14. These sections provide for the formation and registration of the agency, their constitution as a limited liability company under the Companies Acts, their memorandum and articles of association, the board of directors, the holding of shares and the furnishing of balance sheets, the winding up of the agency and the usual provisions under which directors and employees of the agency cannot be Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas or of the European Assembly.

The levy to finance the agency and the schemes is dealt with in sections 15 to 26, the main points being the methods of collecting the levy and the channelling of funds to programme sponsors. The European Social Fund will also be involved in the funding of the programmes concerned.

The Youth Employment Agency must be competent and efficient and have a flexibility to contemplate initiatives and embark upon new departures. With these considerations in mind I am proposing to establish the agency as a limited company. Approval of the Oireachtas to this approach is required in the legislation which we are now discussing. Its advantages lie in that the agency can be quickly established and operative and can also have the flexibility not alone to assess, co-ordinate and expand existing activities to make a distinctive contribution in their own right towards alleviating the problems of youth unemployment.

I propose to appoint a board of 11 members to direct the agency's operations. Two of these would be representative of employer organisations and two of youth interests. In addition a representative from the Ministers for Education and the Environment respectively will be appointed, also two members of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and, finally, three board members including the chairman, will be appointed directly by me as Minister for Labour. I am confident that this board can make a most fundamental contribution through directing the activities of the Youth Employment Agency towards fully realising the objectives for which they are being established.

The memorandum and articles of association of the company will incorporate the following detailed terms of reference:

(a) To review the effectiveness of youth employment, work experience and training programmes with particular reference to their impact on disadvantaged youth;

(b) to extend existing youth job creation, training and work experience programmes, while also providing for increased penetration for such programmes among disadvantaged youth;

(c) to arrange for assistance to be given to voluntary, social or community organisations to provide employment for young people where this is not possible under existing programmes;

(d) to arrange assistance for young people with the establishment of an enterprise in areas other than those in which existing bodies, for example, the IDA, county development teams and AnCO, operate; in particular the agency should promote, through education and publicity, the concept of self-help and enterprise amongst young people, either individually or in co-operative endeavours;

(e) to carry out and administer youth employment and training schemes where there are gaps in existing programmes;

(f) to co-ordinate and integrate the various schemes, ensure there is no duplication between them and, in this connection, to set general standards for the various schemes in relation to such matters as the ages, wages and allowances of participants;

(g) to identify areas outside the scope of existing programmes into which Government aid to young people could be extended, for example, agriculture and other primary activities;

(h) to consider the possibility of improving the access of unemployed young people to a range of educational and training courses in the private and public sectors possibly by means of a voucher scheme for eligible youth;

(i) to submit views, as appropriate, on educational policy and its effectiveness in preparing young people for working life.

As regards the detailed activities of the agency, this will be a matter for decision by the board. The composition of the board, representative as they are of a broad spectrum of society, will put them in a position to devise and implement new programmes where existing schemes are deficient. The proposed terms of reference leave scope for such an approach.

Equally important is the need to maintain and, indeed, improve the quality of existing schemes as they are expanded. I regard this as being one of the central roles to be entrusted to the agency.

I can see scope for the agency to take new initiatives in a number of areas. For example, there are many new areas of social and community work emerging. The agency could take the initiative in looking at young peoples involvement in the growing field of child-care services, home care for the aged and similar activities. Assistance will also be given with the development of enterprises.

While dealing with the question of new initiatives by the agency, I would like to refer to the assistance which the agency will give to local areas and rural areas. The register of young job seekers prepared by the NMS will indicate the areas where excess labour exists and where there is a need for assistance for young people. The agency will then arrange for programme sponsors to come forward with the necessary programmes.

I could envisage here the local organisation of an integrated series of activities which take account of local circumstances, in particular building education and training elements into all programmes including those now providing only short term employment. This will involve cooperation between, for instance, local authorities, programme sponsors and VECs. It is fair to say that existing schemes and arrangements do not cater for local areas and there is a clear need for the type of overall approach that will result from the activities of the Youth Employment Agency.

The agency will also help rural areas. One of the terms of reference is to identify areas outside the scope of existing programmes into which Government aid to young people could be extended. Under this heading, I anticipate a concentration on employment in agriculture and other primary activities.

In carrying out their activities the agency will, of course, be in continuous consultation with development bodies, including regional and local development bodies.

The overall objective is to equip young people to enter working life, and to take emphasis off "make-work" schemes. The agency's composition, and their ability to take an overview of the whole area of the transition from education to working life, put them in a unique position to make improvements to existing schemes and to devise new programmes.

The Bill provides also for the collection of a 1 per cent levy on all income. It is my intention to devote proceeds of the levy as far as possible directly to the Youth Employment Agency in the normal manner. I will make funds available to the agency following their submission of an annual outline programme to the Minister for Labour and subsequently following receipt of regular progress reports.

The subhead in my Department Vote will also contain a provision covering the direct channelling of funds to youth training and employment programmes with the sanction of the Minister for Finance. This provision is intended to cover any difficulties which may arise in channelling funds to programme sponsors in 1982.

I intend, for a number of reasons, to finance both the existing schemes catering for 20,000 young people and the additional schemes for a further 20,000 young people from the proceeds of the levy. I considered financing the existing 20,000 figure from general taxation and the additional 20,000 from the levy. I can say immediately that I cannot accept this proposition. Such an approach would quite simply waste money, lead to a large bureaucratic structure and would, worst of all, lead to confusion about what we are doing. I want a co-ordinated approach between what has been done in the past and what will be done in the future. My present proposals are for a new start that will be cost effective, avoid duplication and give the best value for money.

As indicated in the Government's programme it is intended to defray the cost of the operations coming within the scope of the Youth Employment Agency through the medium of a 1 per cent levy on all income. This 1 per cent charge will be collected by means of an appropriate increase in persons health contributions and the machinery used to collect the health contributions will also be used to collect the levy.

Three different types of income are covered, referred to in the Bill as reckonable earnings, reckonable emoluments and reckonable income, all of which will be defined by me in regulations which will follow the precedent set in the case of health contributions.

Briefly, all income to be levied will consist of income which is assessable for income tax. Reckonable earnings will cover income from insurable employment. This category refers to the PAYE sector. Reckonable emoluments will cover income from non-insurable employment and from occupational pensions. The non-insurable employment category refers to the self-employed, certain farmers, directors fees and so on. Reckonable income will cover income from all other sources such as income derived from the profits or gains from farming, income from investment and so on.

Certain social welfare recipients will be exempt from the levy as will medical card holders who are not in employment, while for those card holders in insurable employment the levy will be paid by their employer.

In addition, an amendment which I introduced in the Dáil yesterday excluded other social welfare payments now liable for health contributions. Preliminary consideration is being given to exempting low-paid workers from payment of the health contribution. Whatever is decided in that instance will be taken into account in deciding liability for the youth employment levy.

In view of comments made by certain Opposition Deputies in the Dáil yesterday, I would like to emphasise in that section 15 of the Bill, which remains unchanged since the original drafting, makes it quite clear that the levy applies to personal income. Corporate profits, not being liable to the health contribution, are not covered by the levy. Personal income which is derived from profits, such as dividend, and income for investments, will of course be covered.

A levy of 1 per cent on all incomes covered by the health contribution, with certain exceptions for medical card holders and social welfare payments, is expected to yield £63 million in a full year and £40 million from 6 April 1982 to the end of 1982. Between April 1982 and December 1982 we would expect to receive £40 million.

Social Fund receipts will depend upon the mix of programmes carried out by the agency. In brief, we obtain from the Social Fund 55 per cent of our training costs and £11 per week per worker on a work experience job programme.

I have given detailed consideration to the question of having a youth employment fund as suggested by some Deputies in the Dáil. I rejected this idea, however, on the grounds of the complex accounting procedures involved and also because funds would not become available until somewhere towards the middle of 1982. I intend to have the agency in operation long before that date. The method of financing which I have adopted is simpler. It provides for the payment of the levy on reckonable earnings and reckonable emoluments to be paid into the social insurance fund and from there to be paid to me. Levy on income other than reckonable emoluments will be paid direct to me. I will pay all the money into the Exchequer and it will become available to the agency in a subhead in my Department's Vote.

The argument was made in the Dáil that the levy is an additional tax. I would emphasise that the overall level of direct and indirect taxation will be set by Government in formulating their budget. The existence of the 1 per cent levy will be taken into account when this is being done. In this sense the levy is not an additional tax — it is a positive step taken to identify a given amount of revenue as being devoted entirely to the important task of combating youth unemployment.

The use of the moneys raised must be taken into account in looking at the impact of the levy. I intend to improve the concentration of available resources on those most in need — young unemployed people in our poorer areas. By this means, along with the exemption of social welfare pensions and other payments from the levy, I am ensuring that the effect of this new measure will be progressive.

The Bill provides for the variation of the levy. This provision is designed to allow for a reduction of the levy at any time should the proceeds be greater than is felt necessary for the operations of the agency. Such a situation would come about with a reduction in the extent of the youth employment problem.

I would add that an increase in the levy above 1 per cent cannot occur unless the Bill is changed in the Dáil and Seanad. The variation can only be made downwards.

I accept that the agency will not solve all the problems of youth unemployment. There is, of course, the need to do all we can in the normal way to increase employment and so provide additional permanent job opportunities for our young people. We will continue and intensify the traditional forms of job creation and our efforts to increase the productive capacity of the economy through increasing competitiveness. On top of this the Government will be taking a major initiative in the establishment of a national development corporation soon. This corporation will be a major asset in the development and expansion of productive employment. While the agency will be training and investing in our young workforce, the corporation will be ensuring that the exploitation of stable commercial opportunities in either the private or public sector will not be constrained by under-capitalisation or other considerations.

There is a need to develop our manpower as well as to develop our capital structure. Manpower is the area where we have a competitive advantage over other EEC countries. Our young people are our future workforce and, as Minister for Labour, I am proud to have the opportunity of taking a new initiative in the development of this manpower. The Youth Employment Agency, through increasing and improving the training, work experience and other job-creation opportunities available to our young people, will enhance our work force, make it more competitive and increase its earning potential. This must be seen not only in the traditional sense of improving our position as a potential location for new industry. The building up of the skills of our young workers will of itself contribute to job creation by our own people. The work of the agency will, I hope, bring about an increase in the number of young people who have the capacity to start, manage and succeed in their own enterprises.

These are the objectives of the Bill and I hope that the Senators will be able to add to the ideas and the work that will be done by the agency. I commend the Bill to the House.

Mrs. Honan

First, I should like to welcome sincerely the Minister to this House. Though I am convinced that the Minister has the interests of youth at heart, I am concerned that we might be creating another monster and in the end have no better service for the children or the youth of this small country. Is this Bill going to co-ordinate all the existing systems like AnCo, Manpower and services which the IDA might at the moment have for helping in the field of youth? Will it go further and take over all the youth services as we know them at the moment? At present, of course, we have money from a Department other than the Department of Labour. I am referring to the Department of Education.

At this point I ask the Minister for Finance, if he intends cutting back — as seems to be his style — not to do so in the area of youth services. Though I have never been around the table of Government, and my chances of ever being there are rather slim, I would ask the Minister for Finance to give to the Minister for Labour the money he needs to look after, to give service to and back up to the youth of this country, on whom we put such emphasis. We quote every week at meetings the numbers of people under 25 years of age. It suits us at times to do so because we are actually talking about the number of votes in that respect.

As a Senator living near a centre, that the Minister visited last week, AnCO in Shannon, I still have reservations about the AnCO apprenticeship scheme. In my 25 to 30 years in public life, but more recently because people are coming to me more, I have found difficulty in getting some of the youth, whom I know the Minister is concerned about, into AnCO. I am talking about youth I could stand over, who should have been taken into the AnCO centre for apprenticeships. Recently I have found also that having done the apprenticeship some of these boys and girls find a lot of difficulty in getting placements after coming out of the AnCO centre.

I will make just a reference at this point to the NRB because it is a field in which I have directly served, totally as a voluntary worker for a long time. I was glad to see that the percentage of placement in that section went up in the last year by 30 per cent. The interesting thing about these young people, who have the unhappiness of not being too well and have to be placed, is that they have taken the initiative, maybe with my assistance or with somebody else's, have been placed and have come out quite well because of being given a chance. We have been able to place them in jobs directly afterwards. It might be important to say this. The Minister, I am sure, is aware of it. While I am referring to those people and while I do not want to single them out from the rest of us — this is something on which I have strong views — maybe in his own time the Minister might ensure that we have an additional scheme to deal with that particular section of youth.

I would like to ask the Minister what will become of the £200,000 which the Minister for Finance has announced will be available? Will there be £500,000 next year? I have close association with the youth services. I went into that field when it was not glamorous or vote-catching. I decided to do this a long time ago, when they were really pioneering, when people went into the youth field to help these kids who had problems. Will this Bill swallow up the funds that come directly for the reconstruction of youth centres as I know them down in the country? I have personal experience of the one in Ennis. If I am not making myself clear I will speak to the Minister about it again. I am a little worried that, because of the tremendous voluntary commitment by the people in an area — again we have the situation where in one area there is total commitment to deal with this problem and then in another area there is not and I accept that the Minister has to make laws for all the country — this Bill might be seen, because perhaps it has not been explained to them up to now, although they may understand more clearly when the Bill becomes law, as a voluntary withdrawal from this service.

My only son qualified as a teacher and, rather than go into the classroom straightaway, he went into the youth field I am referring to. He worked at half the salary for four years because of his total commitment to youth and to the problems as he saw them. Another mother might say, "Look, you just get in there and teach". I did not do that. I let my son do his own thing. I have no regrets because he gave a lot to them. When the Minister brings in legislation will he knock out of the field this kind of person who is serving directly with the child or the youth that he seems to be concerned about? Will he knock that person and the people who work around that particular person? I might be swinging away from the Bill now but somebody will correct me if I am.

I have felt that our educational system for a great many years, and indeed under my own party's Governments, has put too much emphasis on the academic side of education and not enough emphasis on the vocational or the technical schools, as they were known down the country. I have advised boys and girls, after the intermediate certificate, when I saw their standards, to move into the vocational schools rather than head for just one honour in the leaving certificate and have no job after that. I am glad to say that we have at long last educated ourselves and the public to accept the tremendous role that vocational schools have played in this country. In recent years I have been proved right that we did not have enough people with technical or vocational education and had too many academics. This is correcting itself and I think we may now be heading for more of a balance. I ask the Minister to tell us how many he will appoint to the board.

Mr. Kavanagh

Three.

Mrs. Honan

The Minister is the boss regardless of what names come before him. I accept that there is a National Youth Council of Ireland and there are all these various bodies. I understand the Minister is a very busy person but maybe there is somebody in his Department who might be good enough to take a look at who his three nominees should be. I find that sometimes there is a dreadful gap between the man at the top, who is trying to administer something, and the person in the field who is actually working out what Ministers try to bring in in a Bill. which may never work out the way he originally intended it to do the day he initiated the legislation. I think the Minister understands what I am saying.

A very hard look could be taken at career guidance in our schools, because we do not have a proper career guidance system. I have girls coming to me every day hoping to get into the field of nursing, and I find that they have not done science and chemistry. Of course, you have to have science and chemistry now to get into any of the hospitals. I know it is not the Minister's Department but we are talking about youth and we are talking about giving them jobs, so he might talk to the Minister for Education about taking a look at the career guidance system that exists at the moment. As a public representative I am certainly not happy about it.

The Minister said that the Government have decided to establish without delay a youth employment agency. This is getting back again to what I said earlier. Does this mean that the Minister is putting all the present services in the youth field under this Bill? I have already referred to the voluntary and social community organisations and totally committed people. That is the only way I see it at all levels, having served for such a long time in the mentally handicapped field. I resent any member of my party or any other party bringing politics into that particular field. I would like to feel that we would not play politics with this very important Bill we are discussing and I do not intend to do it. I think I have said what I mean. I may not have said it in the fashion that Senators Gemma Hussey and O'Connell would, but I have said it and I will come back again, possibly at a later Stage. The Minister might take note of some of the remarks I have made.

Mrs. G. Hussey

I want to speak very briefly in welcome of this Bill. First of all, I would like to echo other Senators in welcoming the Minister to this House for the first time. It gives me particular pleasure to do so as he is a constituency colleague of mine, I congratulate him on the work he is doing so energetically and I wish him well with it.

This Bill, it seems to me, is an imaginative and timely one. It is an immensely practical measure and is one which initiates a new organisation and, at the same time, co-ordinates what has already been done in this field. Such co-ordination is manifestly necessary for various reasons which the Minister stated. He mentioned some of the extremely well-meaning and indeed practical work done by the National Manpower Service work experience programme, by AnCO's general training programme, by the temporary grants scheme of the Department of Education and the Department of the Environment's environmental improvement scheme. These are all very good schemes started at different times, as the Minister said, to meet particular needs. It is manifestly time that co-ordination was begun in all these efforts.

The Minister made an in-depth speech and there is not much need to go into too much depth at this Stage of the Bill. I would like to make a few remarks about the prospect of unemployment as it affects young people. Nothing can be so worrying to society in general as the prospect of any kind of hopelessness setting in among young people. This is a very real danger for many young people. It is damaging to themselves and, of course, damaging to the future social prospects and economic prospects of the country. It must be a feature of unemployment which gives us enormous pause for thought.

In discussing this Bill, of course, we must recognise the unique Irish situation, the demography of Ireland and the fact that despite the envy felt by many European countries about our enormous young population and the richness that could give this country, in a time of economic recession as we are facing now it is an extra and an extremely severe headache. We have, of course, a young, well-educated population, which is eminently employable. That gives us an advantage over many other countries. The situation is quite the reverse in West Germany where there is an enormous number of people about to retire or retired, and this is creating its own probleams. We have, among other problems, the challenge to face up to youth employment.

It is right to do what this Bill basically sets out to do, to ask the community lucky enough to have an income to contribute to the future of the country in this very real and down-to-earth way. Because of the very difficult economic circumstances we must use our imagination to raise specific funds for this work. As if, indeed, the community needed an extra reminder, we had a very dramatic television programme last week about a Dublin suburb which laid bare very many unpalatable facts. Among them were the results of unemployment among young people. We heard of young people who, for want of stimulation, for want of some kind of pride in themselves or sense of achievement, roam around the streets at night seeking to destroy, who doss down in abandoned cars, who terrorise old people and bully young children. These people fill us all with a sense of guilt, a sense of anger in many cases and a sense of helplessness. We should also remind ourselves that if these young people get the habit of not working stagnation will occur, stagnation of willpower or stagnation of mental stimulation, which is an extremely serious long-term problem.

I would like to turn to one other major concept in this Bill, which I welcome very much, that is the concept of identifying a particular given amount of revenue from one area and directing it specifically to tackle another area. It seems to me that this is an important and very much under-used concept in the general running of the State's finances and one which, I believe, should be very much developed. It is a fact that people in general, and the business community in particular, feel a helplessness at the size of the youth unemployment problem. They see it as an intractable problem. They feel something should be done and they would like to do something. They feel it is impossible to make any kind of real inroad into the problem. They are worrying about the implications for the future of youth unemployment, yet they are not happy that the general taxation system is working in that specific area. I believe that to have made this progress towards imposing this 1 per cent levy and directing it specifically to the Youth Employment Agency is the sort of road we should be travelling.

That sort of concept could be used in other areas. I hope that on other occasions we might see certain new capital taxation being directed specifically at poverty projects. I would like to see this concept developed of taking a particular amount of income from a particular group and directing it towards another group and getting rid of vagueness and sense of frustration on the part of the taxpayer who cannot see exactly what is happening to his money. However, because it is specifically raised for this purpose, it places an extremely grave onus on the Minister and the Government to make sure that this money will be efficiently used and will be seen to be used efficiently. I am sure the Minister does not need me to tell him that. He must be aware of it and ensure it is done right. Because of this concept of directing specific money to specific tasks, this Youth Employment Agency will carry a lot more with it than just the work it will set out to do—it will carry a lot of our hopes about a new system.

In passing through this House Bills setting up new agencies, we take the opportunity to make suggestions about the boards of directors of these organisations. It would be important that people of proven entrepreneurial skills should be included on this board. The Minister mentioned the question of self-help and productive work. It would be a pity if a board were to be set up which did not include one or more people who have shown themselves to be people who have developed skills and have created new competitive products, because this will be the absolute basic necessity for this country. I take the Minister's point that one could include child care, home care of elderly people and so on in this scheme. I would applaud that, but it must be specifically directed towards productive work.

No discussion of youth unemployment generally should be concluded without a reference to the problem of young female unemployment and women's employment generally. I would ask the Minister to give a breakdown of the figures he gave in his speech relating to the live register of youth unemployment for November 1981. There were 36,839 persons under 25 years of age unemployed. I would like to know what the breakdown of that is as between men and women and what percentage of male and female employed that breakdown represents.

Not only are women still grossly behind men in earnings in the workforce but they suffer a wider range of discrimination in the benefits available to them when they are unemployed. Therefore, I strongly urge on the Minister, when he is appointing his board of directors, that a specialist in the problems of female employment and education be appointed to that board. That would be an absolute essential on any board which sets out to tackle the problem of youth unemployment. The employment patterns among women are changing. The employment demands of women are changing. They must be recognised and faced up to. I ask the Minister to remember specifically that fact when he is appointing his board.

This is an important Bill. I hope all Senators will give it a welcome and pass it speedily through the House, because the Minister has said he hopes to have the agency's work begun very quickly. I hope it will not be long before this House will be debating a report from the new agency and that it will be a report on which we can congratulate the Minister again, as much as we wish him well now.

Mrs. O'Rourke

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important Bill. In the main thrust of the Minister's speech I could not help but note that every second line is inextricably bound up with education. He has, quite correctly, identified this and the problems which exist in the present educational structures vis-à-vis the large number of youth in the country today and the huge potential. Many of us in public life from time to time stand up at dinners, social functions, cumainn meetings and so on and pay service — in many cases lip service — to the huge natural human resource that we have, the very large young population. It is only lip service and pious talk if there is not something very definite and concrete done about it. We are quite unique in Europen in this particular problem. It is both a blessing and a problem. It is a blessing because it is such a huge natural resource which if channelled, utilised and fully explored correctly will lead to a great change of feeling in our country in the years to come. If it is not channelled and utilised correctly the people who have responsibility towards young people will find we have failed. There should not be any disagreement about the Youth Employment Agency Bill. If one were to go into any street in Dublin today, stop people, do a mini-survey and ask people, “Do you agree with giving 1 per cent of your income to provide jobs for young people”, most of them would say “yes”. Perhaps this is a point for Committee Stage but I have a reservation about this whole system in regard to the exact amount of the 1 per cent levy which will go into the exact pigeon hole which will be labelled “jobs for young people”. I would like to put that on the record. When the Minister is replying perhaps he will give us more details of the precise nature of this. I am anxious that there should be precise accountability in regard to the 1 per cent levy, which the people will be generously contributing, and know exactly where it will go. It must go for the purpose intended and not into a giant purse from which it may be drawn for other matters.

The Minister spoke of the lack of preparedness in young people for the transition from school to the workforce. We all speak many times of this and about all its angles. I referred in a previous debate, on education, to this matter with reference to the schools-industry link programme which was pioneered by the Manpower Consultative Committee during the term of a former Minister for Labour, Deputy Gene Fitzgerald. This was very welcome and I believe the evaluation process which is going on now into that particular programme and will soon be completed will prove that it was a most valuable process. I have said before that I was involved in that scheme in a very direct way as a teacher in my home town of Athlone. I was a member of the pilot project committee there. It was most successful in that it helped to bring about a realisation among young people and among parents that industrial life was not something that was to be seen as a last resort for young people leaving school, that there were all sorts of areas of employment open to young people and that this was one that should be explored fully.

This manpower consultative sub-committee will have performed a very valuable role if it reflects attitudes to industrial employment which will prove that there are areas of employment open to young people other than the safe traditional jobs that have been the norm in Ireland. This is historical here and I expect it dates from post-Famine times. There has been an emphasis on the safe white collar jobs that will have the pensions, the jobs that will be nine-to-five and where the future is guaranteed. We are at a crossroads now in employment and in life generally in Ireland with regard to this. Just as the people who weathered the industrial revolution throughout Europe many years ago went through many crises, we too will have that experience before we come to grips fully with the existing situation. There are not enough jobs for young people or for any age category. It is a great crisis at the moment and the Minister has correctly identified that this is bound up with the whole question of unemployment, not just youth unemployment.

All young people today are given a very fine education, thanks to the free post-primary scheme and the various other advantages that have accrued to young people. The young people leaving school today are articulate and well read, they are very aware and very perceptive. This is as it should be, but because they are so their aspirations are high and we have encouraged those aspirations. Then they leave school and go for training or for higher education or some other area of life and they find that suddenly they are not employable, even though they have been brought up to believe that you play, then you go to school, you work hard and get your exams and then you get a job. Life is not turning out like that and the young people whose intelligence has sharpened and whose attitudes and perceptions have sharpened through their education will find their idealism very much let down. I would fear for the channels that that idealism might be directed into if we do not try to fulfil their ambitions and their aspirations.

Many of us talk about too much emphasis being placed on the academic side and say that there should be more emphasis on the technological side. I fully agree and I have spoken many times this way myself but I would sound a cautious note here. We must not forget that in the future there will be more and more leisure time and we must not lose sight of the academic side of education because it more than anything trains people to use their resources to develop their own characters and their own minds and to deploy themselves in various fields. This will be very important in the era of increasing leisure we will be facing.

It has been said that the existing agencies for youth employment are not doing their best or have been found in some way to be wanting. I would think that this is not the case. The Honourable Member of the House of Commons, Mrs. Shirley Williams, visited Ireland last year and came to our town and Senator Fallon and myself in our capacities as local representatives had the privilege of meeting her. She was with a work study group from the OECD countries investigating how Ireland coped with youth unemployment. I was very interested, therefore, on the eve of the Crosby by-election to hear her say on television that she had visited Ireland and had found the existing youth employment schemes here far ahead of other European countries. Perhaps she was appealing to the Irish voters in Crosby — I do not know if there are many of them — but she did state it quite clearly and that this report would be coming out shortly. She had found the Irish experiments very worthy of note by other countries and ahead of other European countries.

We should pay tribute to the Manpower agency, the consultative committee and the AnCO schemes for the progressive type of pioneering work that they have undertaken in those fields. On the occasion of her visit, Mrs. Williams also spoke about the need for the development of initiative and enterprise in young people. I notice that the Minister has also referred to it in his speech. I would call it a fostering of the spirit of what we would call long ago "sturdiness" in people, a reliance again on their own spirit of survival and initiative.

There is, of course, a swing back to the idea that small is beautiful in business, in schools, in housing schemes, in every area of life because the large form has been found to be unwieldy and bureaucratic and not very much in touch with people. I would like to see developed in young people a spirit of enterprise and entrepreneur-like skills, a development of those types of skills whereby they will see opportunities and ways they can expand themselves. America has very much gone into this field and it surely is the land of the big. If they are thinking small in educational schemes and work schemes it is very much to be noted and, perhaps, copied.

I would echo the Leader of the House when she spoke about the need for parity in job opportunities for women and men and for young boys and young girls. When the Minister is appointing nominees to the board of this new agency I hope he will consider appointing some women to it, not women for women's sake or not token women but women because they have many of the skills that will be needed. After all, they are over 50 per cent of the population. Any woman has a range of skills; she is a time and motion expert, an educationalist and an activist and all sorts of things. I would hope that the Minister would look at this aspect when appointing nominees to this board.

Still in the field of education but bound up with the employment agency, I note that recently the Shannon curriculum development unit have been involved in a very important community-based learning project. The programme has been called the "spiral" programme and it aims to develop in young people the spirit of enterprise and sturdiness that I have spoken about and which is so very important.

The Minister recently when speaking in the Dáil on these and other related matters said that AnCO were now recognised as a European body with powers to initiate young workers' exchange schemes. Youth mobility is a very important aspect of youth employment and as we are more and more part of Europe so we will be more and more into this field. Whilst long ago emigration had a nasty ring about it and if you left the shores you usually did not come back, the future mobility of young workers and workers of all types within the European Community would be a very great advantage in learning what is going on in other countries, coming back and applying what has been learned to this country.

I welcome the main thrust of the Youth Employment Agency. I would ask that the 1 per cent levy be deployed precisely into the employment of young people. I note that we will be receiving a report on this Youth Employment Agency in time to come and therefore we can monitor it. I would not like it to go out from either House of the Oireachtas or from anyone that this is the panacea for all youth ills. It cannot be because there is no immediate remedy. Neither would I like it to go out that what has gone before in the field of youth employment has been to no avail. I have not said that anybody has said so but a general trend could be identified as meaning that. In my own capacity I have found the Manpower agency and AnCO of wonderful help in the training of young people. I would think there is closer liaison to be built up between the Department of Labour and the Department of Education in this field.

One reservation I would mention. The Minister said that this 1 per cent levy is to be taken in accordance with the precedent set by the health contribution and that corporate profits are to be exempt. I wonder why corporate profits should not be taxed for this purpose. Perhaps it is something that can come up on Committee Stage but it is a point which struck me. The axe is going to fall very heavily on the middle class in the very near future if we are to believe all the speeches that we read lately and I wonder why corporate profits could not be taxed. Businesses have a very great stake in this country and I am sure if approached they would be more than willing at least to investigate the idea.

There are many other aspects one could talk about in this debate and I hope on Committee Stage to have the opportunity to speak again.

Mr. O'Mahony

I welcome the Minister to the House and take this opportunity to congratulate him most sincerely on his performance as Minister in the period he has been in office. I would like in particular to congratulate him on the speed with which he has got this Bill before the Oireachtas. It is a complicated measure and has major implications and certainly it is difficult to think back to any previous occasion when a measure of this kind came from inception to implementation as rapidly as this.

The problem of youth unemployment is, as we have all said, profoundly serious. Indeed in many parts of the country it is reaching the point of crisis. As the Minister said, almost 37,000 people are registered as unemployed, according to the latest figures. Presumably there are some thousands more in this situation, given that at least some young people do not register as unemployed because it is not financially worthwhile to do so. There is, of course, a constant flow of young people off the register and it is difficult therefore to put any accurate figure on the level of long-term unemployment among young people, but one must assume that it is rising and that the figure of 12,000 long-term unemployed among those under 25, which the Minister quoted in his Dáil contribution, will tend to rise. In addition there are many thousands of young people in employment which comes nowhere near meeting their expectations as citizens and in which they find themselves subject to abiding frustrated.

The result of all of this is not only the obvious loss of potential production to the economy which unemployment represents. It is not only a personal crisis in the lives of the individuals concerned, which is self-evident, but it is a problem also of the potential for substantial and dangerous alienation among young people from their own society which, in turn, has the potential to develop into a major social crisis, particularly in our urban areas, some aspects of which we have already noted and are aware of.

The Bill before us represents an urgent response to this set of crises. It is not a final solution in the sense that it does not purport to offer lifetime employment to the young people who will benefit from it. That is not its intention. It is, however, an indication of seriousness on the part of the Minister and the Government about the problem of youth unemployment and it is an attempt to begin to come to grips with it before the potential social crisis falls upon us.

If the agency is to succeed — and I believe it will — two preconditions will need to be meet. One is that the agency must work within the context of the proposed national plan, that is to say, there must be some linkage between what they are doing and what the Government are proposing in terms of the creation of worthwhile long-term employment for the people concerned. It must therefore, be linked into the whole business of national economic policy. Secondly, it is important — and the Minister also alluded to this very clearly — that the projects engaged in, apart from the training projects, must be concerned not simply with taking people off the live register but must attempt to provide employment which is seen as being valuable by the people concerned, whether in terms of value to society or in terms of adding something to the wealth which we create as a people.

I like particularly the idea of support for co-operative enterprises organised, run and developed by young people in the commercial area. That is a profoundly important idea and I hope the agency will place great emphasis on supporting the development of this kind of enterprise because it has the merit not only to provide support and employment for young people but, presumably also, to enable them to make a useful contribution to wealth creation.

The only concern I have noted on the part of the Opposition has been to do with the 1 per cent levy and I note that the Leader of the Opposition Party in the Dáil said that this was a form of taxation and he had great reservations about it as a result. It is a form of taxation and quite straightforwardly so. It is earmarked taxation and it is less than honest of him to suggest that it is possible to engage in this kind of operation without putting a price on it. Apart from the need to fund the operation, it is important that those of us who are employed realise that the question of coming to grips with the problem of youth unemployment, or unemployment generally, is not cost free. Therefore it is valuable in bringing home to us that there is a price which we all must pay if we are to come to grips at some point with the problem of unemployment generally. His concern at the levy was rather cheap and I do not know whether he pressed an amendment last night or voted against it. It seems to me to have been a less than honest contribution on his part.

The Minister is absolutely right to place this agency in the context of broader economic policy because, at the end of the day, the agency can make a contribution of a temporary kind only to providing employment for individual young people. It cannot of itself provide them with long-term worthwhile employment. Therefore it must be seen as one part of a range of economic policies designed to come to grips with the problem of joblessness. The question is how we go beyond this and come to grips with long-term worthwhile employment for an expanding population in difficult circumstances.

I would like to throw out a number of proposals, none of which is particularly novel but which seem to me to be critical if we are to link this agency into the broad business of economic development and planning for full employment.

There is one matter in particular which seems to me to be worth referring to again. I am aware that most conventional economists would not see much point to it—but as time passes we may have to turn to something contained in the Labour Party's election programme, despite the fact that it did not meet with any resounding response from the populous generally. It is worth mentioning again as something which is not of direct relevance to the Minister but presumably of relevance to the Government. A crucial macro-economic problem we have now is the balance of payments deficit and unless this is corrected swiftly and substantially we do run the risk of the devaluation of the pound with all the adverse economic circumstances which would flow from that.

The Protocol to the Treaty of Accession to the European Community negotiated in 1972 should be invoked for the first time here and should not be left dormant. The Protocol was negotiated in response to Labour Party's criticism that the economy could not withstand full free trade in the short-run. It provides for possible exceptional measures by this country to protect our vital economic interests in the event of a serious economic crisis. It is difficult to conceive of a situation in which the economic crisis could be much more serious than it is now. Therefore, the idea of the temporary import surcharge of 10 per cent on selected consumer goods from other countries in the Community is worth considering and I suspect will be even more worthy of consideration next year. The import value of these consumer goods in 1980 was £1,100 million and such a surcharge would apply to about half of these imports and would last for one year only at the full rate. It would be phased out over the subsequent years of the proposed national economic plan.

The objectives behind this idea would be, firstly, to ease pressure on the balance of payments, which is a crucial requirement now; secondly, to generate a switch of demand in sensitive industries such as parts of the food processing industry, clothing, footwear, furniture and other household goods industries in order to protect jobs while domestic costs are being brought under control; thirdly, to prevent devaluation of the IR£ inside the EMS with the consequent inflationary effects which that would have, and, fourthly, to provide a source of revenue to the Exchequer in the short-run. These derogations, if they were to be considered or pursued, would, of necessity, have to be agreed by the European Community. Given that the aims of the proposed national plan are to cut inflation, current borrowing and the payments deficit, the Community would look more favourably on this course of action than might otherwise be the case. This proposal does not mean that I or Labour advocate an abandonment of the letter or spirit of free trade or——

An Cathaoirleach

Can the Senator relate this to the Bill before the House?

Mr. O'Mahony

I am attempting to imply that the problem of youth unemployment will only be dealt with in the long run through measures of this kind and that the present Bill is fundamentally linked to this and other matters, which I hope to refer to briefly.

It has been said by several speakers in the other House that we need to get down to the business of economic planning in a serious fashion. I am pleased that the Minister for Finance said recently that it is intended to move on this matter in the first month of the new year. This is of critical significance. It is not possible to deal with the problem of employment in a small open economy such as ours without a clear commitment to economic planning, not of the kind which was par for the course in the sixties and early seventies, that is to say, planning which is concerned essentially with projecting forward outcomes on the basis of given policies. Rather we should move towards directive economic planning. In this regard, I welcome also the commitment of the Government to institute at an early date a National Economic Planning board and I would urge that this be done prior to the publication by the Government of their own planning objectives. It is only by involving the relevant interest groups in the development of the plan itself that the prospect of success and of fundamental change in our approach to planning can come about.

I would like to support Deputy Higgins in the Dáil when he said that we must begin to think about whether we can do things entirely differently in the area of economic policy. Is it possible for us, for example, to jump through stages of economic growth on the classic model and to short-circuit many difficulties which have been experienced in other countries? Maybe this is possible, as I believe it is, and hopefully the planning board will be concerned with having a look at this too.

The National Development Corporation will play a crucial role also in the area of providing viable long-term employment for the people whom this Bill is designed to help in the short-term. It is critical that the State become the motivating power in the development of industrial policy here. I do not think the private enterprise sector, and certainly not the domestically-owned sector, is capable of providing the range and numbers of jobs which we require and we must face up to this reality. We have to face up to this reality once and for all, and we have to unleash the National Development Corporation, adequately financed, within the context of a national economic plan and social control of investment as an alternative, complementary element to the work of private enterprise. Indeed, it is questionable whether private enterprise exists in any meaningful sense, given the range of subsidies and incentives which are available to it now. That, too, should be looked at.

I would like to make two final points on how we might plan for unemployment. First we need to have a look at industrial strategy. The Telesis Report is with the Government or with the Minister for Industry and Energy and I look forward to the conclusions which will emerge from the Government's consideration of this report. It can be argued that perhaps our industrial incentive system is too liberal, that we are not getting value for money. The parts of the Telesis Report which were leaked seem to imply this.

We must undertake a fundamental review of industrial strategy within the context of the proposed national plan. We must face up to the reality of incomes as a deterrent to employment. It is not the main deterrent to employment creation as is implied frequently by commentators, but it is a variable in this area. In the kind of society we have, which is essentially unplanned, acquisitive and to do with the inter-action of self-interested groups, to achieve appropriate income adjustments over time is unlikely to happen, this is to say, income adjustments over time which are optimum from the point of view of employment creation.

I would argue that the time has come for us to seek to politicise the trade union movement generally to the point where they begin to see the relevance of tradeoffs between income and other potential political gains. That idea has been part of the thinking behind national income agreements over recent years and it must be developed and brought along. It is probable, given a lot of persuasion, that we can reach the point where incomes will be traded against things like employment, like growing participation in ownership by employees in their enterprises, like housing programmes, like equitable taxation and eliminating poverty and so on. That will happen only when the trade union movement is politicised and has political objectives.

I heartily welcome this Bill. It is a major innovation which is going to make a significant contribution to handling the short-term crisis we find ourselves in. The measures it proposes will, indeed, be needed indefinitely for alternative groups, and are profoundly welcome. The Minister is absolutely right to place it in the context of national economic policy generally, that is to say, it is one part of a set of measures required if we are to get to grips once and for all with the problem of unemployment, particulary in the content of a rapidly rising population.

Mr. B. Ryan

It has just come to my notice that I have been most discourteous. There has been a succession of Ministers here this week and I did not welcome any of them or congratulate them on their appointments. If anybody felt I was being discourteous it was purely an oversight as a result of my inexperience.

This is most welcome legislation. However sceptical I may be about the capacity of our present economic order to deal with the fundamental problems in a society where some of the underlying assumptions of the market economy no longer apply, that is, that an increase in price will necessarily encourage extra production until you get an equilibrium between them, and energy will become progressively more scarce, energy is the staple raw material of our economy, and no matter what price is put on it we cannot produce more than is available. Land is another one of those things. I may be sceptical about the general assumptions on which our economic order is organised, but nevertheless, the Bill is most welcome. It is a Bill of what can only be described as noble objectives. The short Title talks about establishment, development, extension, operation, assistance, including financial encouragement, supervision, co-ordination, integration, either directly or indirectly, of schemes for the training and employment of young people.

It is important that somebody should talk about the experience of unemployment, particularly for a young person, because we tend to see it in numbers. If any public representative stands up and talks about poverty and mentions the unemployed to a group of solid Irish citizens, the unfortunate reaction you will get in many cases is that most of them are dole scroungers living off the State, fiddling the dole, who could get work if they wanted to. This is a particular myth which has been assiduously fostered particularly by spokesmen for industry, employers and those who control the decisions about investment and the direction of the economy. When people talk about the disincentive benefit or value of unemployment benefit I can never figure out if they know value or the the rates of unemployment assistance and unemployment benefit. They pick isolated examples and generalise. This contributes enormously to the personal humiliation of one who is unemployed. The absolute devastation, especially for young persons, of spending a year or two years after they have left school unemployed and without a job is compounded enormously when this sort of appalling, prejudicial and bigoted headlines appear in newspapers regularly with the authority of people in society who do know better, of that I have no doubt, but who are taking the ball on the hop and trying to loosen up the labour market by introducing greater flexibility in terms of supply and demand, the cost of labour responding to the demand. Obviously, they see the welfare system as one cushion which protects people from accepting lower wage rates. There is a widespread belief in our society that the unemployed are scrounging off society, that large numbers of unemployed people are drawing the dole and making a fortune.

There may be some individuals like that because, unfortunately, we are not a society with the highest standards of honesty. We tend to take things like financial matters a little bit easily. Therefore, I am sure there is some dishonesty in this area. However, the humiliation this sort of campaign has produced for young people is something nobody talks about. A young unemployed person in the atmosphere and sort of hostility shown towards the unemployed, must feel that he has failed. Therefore, any attempt to bring us beyond this sort of failure complex to give young people a sense of purpose is to be welcomed.

The experience of unemployment, as our unemployment exchanges are organised, must contribute to this humiliation — the "no loitering" signs, the fact that they are never painted, the long queues, the fact that you sign a receipt before you get the money, a very interesting administrative practice which is fairly standard in employment exchanges, sign the receipt and you get the money — are all good ways of making sure nobody gets anything out of the way, but the personal humiliation involved is enormous.

The Bill is most welcome in its objectives. Particularly welcome is the interesting idea the Minister put forward of encouraging young people to set up enterprises. On the basis of experience of attempts to set up community-based co-operative enterprises, the agency will want to have an enormous amount of clout and be able to knock a lot of heads together. I refer in particular to an experience in Connemara with the initial assistance of the Combat Poverty Programme. There was an attempt to set up a co-operative mariculture project which would have produced £9,000 a year for each family involved in west Connemara. The project was economically viable but never got off the ground because the various State agencies involved broke the hearts of the people concerned by referring them from one agency to another. This has been documented in one of the briefing documents made available at the Kilkenny poverty conference. It is a scandalous indictment of the ability of our State agencies to co-operate with each other, to co-ordinate a project and to fund and facilitate a project in an area which had nothing before but which was trying to build a productive enterprise based on the natural resources of the area, that is, the sea. It failed because local morale collapsed in the face of the incredible obduracy and inflexibility of various State agencies, not one of whom could accept they were responsible. If this agency is to get involved in encouraging enterprise I hope it recognises that enterprise decisions must be reasonably well thought out and reasonably quickly taken. At the same time, I welcome the emphasis on enterprise.

Politicians, and I include myself, are getting more frightened of young people because they are living in a different culture. They have now virtually their own radio station or stations and the vast majority of young people listen to a different radio station from the older generation, with a different emphasis on news, current affairs and a much greater emphasis on less weighty matters. My general impression is that most politicians do not understand young people. Going on the blandishments offered to young people, some people seem to feel that putting one or two nominees of the National Youth Council on a State agency will appeal to all young people. The majority of young people do not belong to youth clubs or anything like that, particularly the vast majority of disadvantaged youth.

We are becoming a nation of two cultures, an older culture and a youth culture, and we will have to realise our young people see the world very differently, see the world in different values and from a different perspective. They are immensely and almost universally cynical about politicians, the political process and the capacity of politicians to understand them, to respond to them, and to produce anything that can do anything about their present dilemma of unemployment.

It is a particular indictment in our society that we do not know the scale of youth unemployment. The National Manpower Consultative Committee — even such a weighty and prestigious body — can do no more than make a stab at the problem of youth unemployment. All we know is the number of young people on the register. For a large number of young people living at home it is not worth their while signing on because they would be entitled to about 70p a week after their income for living at home is taken into consideration. It is a terrible indictment on us that we do not know how many young people are unemployed or how many young people are in need of employment. The Minister said that that number should be identified better as a result of this Bill. It ought to be an objective of the Bill to try to determine the numbers of unemployed young people.

It is true that among our young people 24 per cent leave school at the age of 15 years or lower. I cannot quantify this, but presumably they leave marginally illiterate, some almost totally illiterate. They are not eligible for any sort of social assistance at 15, and they are probably not eligible for anything other than a short-term job which they lose as soon as they come to adulthood because when they were employed they were young and could be paid a much lower rate. Once they come to the stage when they expect adult rates of pay, or marginally higher rates of wages, they lose their jobs. Obviously, they are unskilled, even in the basic skills of life. I doubt if we even know where they are: in many cases they are probably lost without trace into the general economy. Many of them, I suspect, end up in prison.

We have to face up to a fact. If we do not do something which is big, continuing and successful about youth unemployment we will have a problem of urban violence on our hands. We have a problem of urban violence at present but it is not organised and does not involve confrontations with the State or its agencies. We have the problem of vandalism, thieving and that sort of violence, but sooner or later it will develop and extend into a confrontation with the State and its agencies by disaffected young people who have a right to be disaffected, who have no right to be violent, and who will see the State and its agencies as a further repression on them, adding to the accumulation of poor education, unemployment, poor facilities, the humiliation of the labour exchange and so on. I do not think there is any point in pretending it will not happen or that if we do not talk about it it is less likely to happen. We will have a problem of violence similar to, possibly more serious than because of the proportions in our population, what has happened in Britain if we do not do something now. The objectives of this Bill would meet those criteria. I have some reservations about whether the Bill will meet its own objectives, but it may well happen.

I am very unclear about the procedure by which the good intentions in the Title will be translated into action. Will the agency have funds and by the decision and the determination of where those funds will go, influence all the other agencies, or will it have direct legal authority to tell bodies like AnCO and various youth agencies and other people, what they must do? The range of objectives and tasks being allocated to the agency is enormous. I am not clear about how it is proposed to translate those objectives into action and I would welcome some elaboration on that from the Minister.

If we are to have this agency and if it is to be able to translate those objectives, there is a danger that we will end up with another highly centralised body. I am not clear what is proposed. If this agency is to have between £60 million and £100 million for youth employment projects, is it the allocation of this money or the assessment of projects that it will control or will it have legal authority to tell people what to do? I am worried that if it has all that authority, we will have another centralised agency through which various procedures will have to be passed. I am not particularly experienced in reading legislation, so I may be misunderstanding it or I may have missed something and I would welcome correction. I should like to know if consideration has been given to how the objectives will be translated. I would be worried that we will have another layer of bureaucracy.

There will be two representatives of youth. I am sceptical about helping agencies which have only a token representation of those whom it is intended to help. I am also worried that the representatives of youth might have very little in common with unemployed youth. Unfortunately, I doubt if the Irish Congress of Trade Unions will nominate three young trade unionists. My experience as an active trade unionist is that congress tends to be represented by middle-aged people from the senior bureaucratic ranks. Perhaps the Minister, who has a detailed experience of the trade union movement might persuade them on this occasion to nominate young active trade unionists, or possibly to find somebody involved in the unemployed young people's action groups to serve on the agency. Otherwise, the cultural gap, between those who are running the agency and those who are supposed to be helped by it, will be enormous.

I would like to know the Minister's thinking as to the choice of representatives of various Departments. A larger representation of youth would have been appropriate and representation of Government interests could have been cut back because I do not think a number greater than 11 would be functional.

There was, and still is, a considerable controversy about the levy. Some people suggested quite vigorously that the whole function of this levy and of the Bill was to draw together all the various agencies that are providing work experience and training schemes for young people and to fund them out of the levy and thus save the State the current expenditure on those agencies. I was very glad the Minister mentioned that as a result of the Bill an additional 20,000 young people will be drawn into various schemes and projects. That goes some way towards assuring me.

I was very worried when the Minister said that, as far as possible, he would devote the proceeds of the levy to the Youth Employment Agency. There is that disturbing caveat: "as far as possible". Does that mean as far as the national budgetary situation will permit? Is it as far as the Minister for Finance will permit? Is it as far as money is available at the time? "As far as possible" could range from "as far as administrative problems would permit" or "as far as the national budgetary situation would permit". I would like to know what "as far as possible" means. Does it means as far as administrative procedures will permit? I am very worried that we are setting up an agency to spend money that is already being spent, that we are raising revenue to pay for what is going on at present. I do not understand how much money this agency will have at its disposal. There are about 20,000 young people currently benefiting from various schemes and the Minister tells us another 20,000 will benefit from the schemes which he hopes will spring from the new agency. He mentions £60 million in a year. If the number of young persons involved is to go from 20,000 to 40,000 are we talking about £60 million, £100 million or £30 million? Is there a projection of the sort of funding the agency will have at their disposal? Will it be close to £60 million on current figures, or more or less? I am worried because of the phrase "as far as possible". Does the Minister have at his disposal the costs of the schemes currently being utilised by about 20,000 young people? I have no objection to the levy.

If I should get the opportunity between now and the budget I could happily say that people in a certain income bracket, like most of us in this House, ought to pay more direct taxation because we can afford it. There are one million persons in our society who are needy and poor — I am not particularly enamoured with words like "disadvantaged" and "underprivileged"; "poor" is better, straighter and is an attempt to spur people's consciences. One million people are poor and those who are reasonably well-off ought to be expected to pay more. I support this principle but I do not believe it will happen; I believe those in the middle will pay more.

I am worried not about the levy but about the way it is intended that it should apply. I do not think the exemptions are particularly generous. People who do not have social welfare pensions, for instance, public service pensioners, people on low incomes and the vast majority of the female labour force in industry who earn on average about £70 per week, unless they qualify for a medical card, will be paying the levy. I do not believe there are many pensioners who are well off. Even people who have good private pensions are not well off. It would have been more generous if all people over 65, and on pensions, were exempted en bloc from this levy. There will be a lowering of living standards for the elderly as a result of this levy. It would have been more humane, administratively easier and more just if everybody over 65, whatever income, were exempt. It would be preferable that the small number of people in that bracket who are very well-off would be included in the exemption rather than penalising people who are on the margin of £40 to £50 from various pension schemes and so on.

That is my view. It may not be as radical as people expect but I believe old people, whatever their income or their living conditions, have enough problems without having to worry about further State levies. I do not believe the revenue collected from old people by this levy will be substantial. It would have been simpler and more generous to exempt all people over 65, whatever their source of income.

I understand the logic that as the levy is based on health contributions corporate profits could not be included. That is logical but I do not think it is equitable. I know that dividend payments will be covered by the levy. The argument from industry eternally is that corporate profits are used for reinvestment. Are they? How much of them is going into reserves to preserve their conservative concept of an adequate level of reserves? I am not persuaded that all undistributed profits are automatically reinvested by various agencies. Financial institutions could have had a 1 per cent. levy on profits directed towards youth employment. They are vocal and influential whenever this is suggested. In the interests of equity and patriotic acceptance of lower standards that those institutions tend to appeal for from the rest of us, such a levy should have been introduced. I am not under any illusion that it would raise a vast sum of money but equity does matter. It matters in terms of persuading people that an objective is being set and being pursued. Even at this late stage I would again suggest that corporate profits ought to be included in this 1 per cent levy.

I welcome the Minister's frequent reference to the problems of poor young people. I know the Minister used the word "disadvantaged" but, as I said earlier, "disadvantaged" to a certain extent qualifies the problem and makes it sound less unpleasant than poor young people. He mentioned a concentration of the efforts of the agency in poorer areas. I would be grateful if he elaborated on that. Has he thought out in detail how this should be done? I suggest that a literacy scheme among poor young people would be one way of doing this in the sense that on a one-to-one basis the better educated unemployed young people could be used by the agency to work on literacy schemes with the less educated unemployed young people from the poorer areas. I believe that literacy — this is an objective or a philosphy that is shared by most of the revolutionary movements around the world — is the first priority when dealing with all the problems of social decay. It is extraordinary that the first objective of the Cuban revolutionaries — seeing that I have set myself up as an authority on the Cuban revolution —was to extend literacy. It is also the case in Nicaragua, as Trócaire pointed out in their interesting document on that country where that target, to a large extent, has been achieved already within two or three years.

The extension of literacy is an area on which this agency could concentrate some of its efforts. Literacy schemes must be on a one-to-one basis. I know there is a problem about designating certain areas as disadvantaged or poor areas, but it would be useful to designate areas, inner city areas, and indeed, on the basis of the NESC report, many of the large public authority housing areas, where there would be special emphasis and special funding and, possibly, greater flexibility. We must reach the real poor young people, those who are outside youth clubs, outside schools, outside the labour exchanges — I mean outside in the sense that they are not regarded as eligible or else are living at home and their income would be determined on the basis of what they are getting at home with the result they are not eligible for any substantial benefit. An extraordinary level of flexibility, which is not characteristic, unfortunately, of most State agencies, is needed if we are to rescue that section of our young people who are virtually lost to society. Senator Hussey earlier talked about the programme on Finglas. I believe there are large numbers of young people in the position described. If we are to rescue them, sitting down and saying: "here is our agency, come to us", will not do. If they are not rescued, they will provide the roots of much more serious problems in our society later.

I congratulate the Minister. This is obviously complex legislation. It was an achievement to get it into the Oireachtas so quickly and at a time when the Minister was taken up, at least in recent months, with other weighty matters.

This is a Bill having great potential. I am still not clear as to how the objectives will be translated into action. I should like to be reassured that the levy will be devoted not just as far as possible, but almost entirely, to the project and that it is not just a means of paying for existing schemes with a bit more on top. I hope the youth representatives on the agency will be really representative, at least indirectly, of unemployed youth and not of employed comfortable middle class youth. I welcome the Bill. I am very happy with it and I look forward to seeing the first report of the Youth Employment Agency.

Mr. O'Connell

I should like to welcome the Bill very strongly as an indication of the commitment of the Government in this area and also as an indication of their determination to press ahead with their joint programme and with the social priorities of the parties in the Coalition Government and their other supporters. I should like also to welcome what Senator Honan said with regard to the importance of adopting a non-partisan attitude to a measure of this kind. As a novice, and junior Member of the Seanad, I can say that we do have an opportunity in this House of adopting such an attitude and thereby benefitting the community as a whole. I welcome the Bill because it is a matter of the gravest urgency that we address ourselves to the problem of youth unemployment. We should do so not just because, as a number of speakers suggested, and, indeed, as I intend to say, it is a matter of the general economic and social health of our community but because in this area we are talking of fundamental human rights, the right to work and the right to an income, whatever the latter means.

I welcome these measures as an earnest of the Government's determination to attack the problem of youth unemployment. However, there are certain reservations that I have of a general nature. When I utter these reservations I want to make it clear that I am not in any way criticising the Government as such or the Minister. This is, as has been said already, complex and very important legislation that will remain after the Government and the Members of the Seanad have gone. It is fair to say without any adulation that it is a measure that will always be associated with the Minister's name, something which he will be able to pride himself on in future years.

I should now like to deal with the reservations I have.

It is possible that those reservations may be misunderstood not through lack of ability on my part to communicate what I am trying to say or, indeed, lack of clarity in my own mind about these issues, but because some of the issues which arise out of this measure and in the general area have not really been addressed by anybody to any very effective extent in the mainstream of politics here. The dimensions of the problem of youth unemployment are such that it will not be solved by conventional methods within the conventional social and economic system. No Government in the history of the State has created — I am open to correction — in any year or set of years the number of jobs which would be needed each year over the coming decade to keep pace with demand let alone remove the backlog. Furthermore, we are faced with this task at a time not only of major recession but when very far-reaching technological changes are threatening the entire rationale of many traditional areas of employment. Nor has anybody come up with an answer to the fact, known to all public representatives but increasingly documented in a scientific fashion by researchers, that a substantial proportion of our population, estimated varyingly between one-third and one-quarter of the total, have missed out on whatever affluence was achieved in the last 20 years.

I should like to reiterate my conviction that the Government are proceeding with the greatest urgency and priority in this matter within the context of what is permissible, in our political climate. It is my conviction that conventional methods have failed in this respect and will continue to fail. They will continue to be inadequate because our concepts of work, income and employment reflect neither socio-economic reality nor moral and philosophical necessity. The concept of income which we have is tied to the concept of work. That concept of work is tied to a concept of employment. What precisely do we mean by work in this context? I do not intend to argue this at great length or in very great detail because it might well be felt that this is more a philosophical question or a semantic one than one that may be addressed directly to the purposes of this Bill. What do we mean by work? Do we mean, in effect, a licence to receive an income, a licence to belong to what might be described as the incomed classes? What do we mean by employment? Do we not mean by employment working for somebody else? When we talk of an employee are we talking of somebody who is being employed and, therefore, is having, as it were, something done to him or to her? When we talk of an employer do we mean that person, that entity or that organisation who is doing the employing and, therefore, doing something, as it were, to somebody else? What, in fact, do we mean by the concept of a job? What do we mean when we talk about somebody not having a job?

One of the aspects of this problem on which some other Senators have already touched is the moral stigma in our society of not having a job. Those of us who have had any contact with people who have been unemployed for a substantial period, or even for a limited period, those of us who have studied the experience of areas such as the northern part of our country where some people are unemployed for very extended periods and, maybe, unemployed for their entire adult lives; will begin to appreciate the importance of this state of being unemployed as it affects the self-respect and the status in society of people in this situation.

Reference has already been made in this debate to the criticism which is addressed by some of us to those whom we perceive as abusing the social welfare system. Some of us, not necessarily the same people, also abuse those who at the other end of the socio-economic scale are seen as converting to their own use substantial sums of money and substantial resources, without apparently involving themselves in this thing called work whatever it happens to be. What precisely do we mean by work? Is it a task? Is it a licence to be part of the moneyed classes, part of the incomed classes in our society, to be part of those who have as opposed to those who have not? Is it a licence to be respected by society? Is it a licence to avoid that stigma which goes with the concept that somebody who does not work or who has not got a job is somehow morally responsible for that state and, consequently, is less of a human being than those of us who are employed? When we talk about work should we not be talking possibly about a task to be done, but a task to be done for whom? For somebody else so that they may reap the major part of the fruit of that labour for some amorphous organisation? Why should we work? Should it be to get an income? Should it be as an outlet for the particular vocational direction of our own personality? Should it be for other people or for the community?

It seems that what possibly could appear to be an abstruse, philosophical and semantic argument here is central to our whole approach to the problem of employment, not only the problem of employment but the whole problem of our economy and the manner in which that economy comes out of its present crisis. Here I should like to refer to an experience which my family, my immediate neighbours and I have been encountering for some weeks and which we expect to be encountering for some time to come. On the road where I live there are very ancient gas pipes which have now reached a stage where they must be replaced. They are, one might say, redundant. In the process of replacing those pipes the connection between my house and the sewerage system of the city became disjointed. It took two weeks to get it reconnected with the rest of the city in this very important administrative, biological and social connection. The road continues to be affected by this process. All the services which have any connection with the road are involved. We imagine, without any exaggerating, that this process is unlikely to be finished before Easter.

Before the Chair intervenes to ask me the connection between this chronicle of suburban Dublin and the Bill, I shall try to establish such a connection before he brings the full weight and majesty of his position upon me. What I am talking about is the concept of work which we have. I am talking about the concept of work in particular which public servants have, the concept of work which people in public organisations such as the corporation, the gas company have, the concept of how they should address themselves to the tasks for which they are paid. If we were to bring consultants into this field to consider the job that had to be done they would probably say: "That job could be done within a certain number of weeks, not months". In the type of discussion we have in this area the next phrase after such a statement would be to suggest that all that kind of activity should immediately be handed over to the commercial sector, to the private sector, where it would be done more efficiently and more effectively. That is not the issue. That is not the point that should be made here. The point which should be made is that there is very little incentive for people involved in that kind of activity to carry out the task that is before them with the greatest efficiency and expedition because, I suggest, they believe that were they to adopt such an attitude to work and to the completion of work they would be putting the security of tenure of their jobs at risk. The consequence is that throughout the public service and every aspect of our common lives, in society we find situations in which work, in the sense of task, is not being completed with the greatest efficiency and expedition and with the least expenditure. Consequently, the resources which we might be able to devolve towards the creation of more employment, towards the provision of social welfare on a larger scale, are wasted and a large number of our people are involved in what is in effect a misuse of our national resources, with the result that a smaller but substantial number of our population are at the same time deprived of their fair share of what is available.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Perhaps the Senator will relate his remarks more closely to the Bill.

Mr. O'Connell

I shall. I suggested it might possibly be misunderstood not purely as a result of my lack of clarity and ability to communicate but because we are talking about what is a fundamentally different approach to the basic concepts which lie at the whole provision of employment, a whole public and Governmental approach to the question of employment. We have created over the course of the past couple of decades a society in which concepts of employment and jobs have a certain meaning. We have, at the same time, allowed to develop in our society what is rapidly becoming a permanent sub-stratum of people who are deprived, under-privileged, poor and are increasingly alienated. In our approach to the provision of employment we have tended to concentrate on the creating of jobs. It is interesting to note in this context that some years ago in any discussion on employment or jobs there was a concept of full employment which was frequently mentioned. That concept of full employment is not now mentioned to the same extent. It is interesting to speculate upon the reasons why.

Mr. D. Kiely

A change of Government.

Mr. O'Connell

In the area of full employment one might mention the fact that during the course of the previous administration a certain number of jobs were created which had no real function in terms of the economy. They existed purely for the creation of some statistics and the removal of others. There is a danger that in any kind of measure we take over the coming years — this is a national problem which transcends the parties — we would approach the creation of employment, the meeting of this problem of unemployment in a similar way, that we would find ourselves for the convenience of statistics — it may be political convenience and expediency — creating so-called jobs which have no function, which make no constructive contribution to the economy, which do not meet the vocational need of people to find expression for themselves, and which divert an income of a kind to them but do not do so in the most constructive way.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Chair is very reluctant to interrupt the Senator but the main principle of the Bill is dealing with the Youth Employment Agency. While I appreciate that what the Senator is saying is relevant in some instances the Chair is of the opinion that the Senator is going rather wide.

Mr. O'Connell

I accept the ruling of the Chair on this and I shall try to conclude as rapidly as I can. However, the Chair, during the course of the debate, has permitted similar latitude and a detailed discussion which might be more appropriate to other Stages of the Bill. However, I accept the ruling of the Chair and will proceed to draw my remarks to a conclusion.

We will make no serious impact on the problem or avoid the wider consequences of failure in this area until we move towards a public philosophy which is radically different from that which is the basis of the present consensus in our society. Only when we start from the concept of human dignity and the right to achieve that dignity, and not from the other end of the scale, will we begin to move towards a solution which will be rational, democratic and just.

The road on which we are now travelling is a road towards disaster. Senator Brendan Ryan has already referred to the kind of disaster that faces us, a disaster that has already struck the northern part of this country — and we would be very unwise to assume that the origins of their troubles are exclusively in tribal warfare or the conflict of different brands of nationalism. What we have recently been hearing about Finglas and all the ‘Finglases' in the southern part of the country and what we witnessed on our streets during the summer are warning signals which we will ignore at our peril.

We must welcome this Bill. We must welcome the positive commitment of the Government towards youth employment and the commitment of the Minister himself to this.

We must consider the Bill in the context of the economy, in the context of employment as a whole and in the context of the attitudes of our society towards employment. We must realise that it is an interim measure. Until we move towards a different concept, a different understanding of what faces our community in this area, in particular the demographic time bomb which lies beneath us, this measure will turn out to have been an interim measure which, gallant and brave though it may have been, will not have proved to be sufficient to cope with the problem.

Mr. D. Kiely

I welcome this Bill very much. It is about time that the people faced up to their obligation to create employment for what I regard as the best natural resource available to us, namely, our young people. However, I have certain reservations about the way we intend to tackle this question just as I had reservations about the way it has been tackled up to now. In the part of the country where I live there is a huge aluminium project in progress. There are something in the region of 5,500 people working there, many of whom are young people just out of school. This means that by the time they leave the job they will be 21 or 22. This job is on a phase down and not one apprentice was taken on there. A Government agency should become involved to ensure that young people would have the opportunity of working on a job of that size, getting the qualifications rather than having foreign investors and foreign people with modern methods taking over large jobs from us. Another example is the proposed gas link from Kinsale to Dublin. We have not got the qualified people for this job. The contract has been sent abroad.

In regard to the agencies that are under our control at the moment, the National Manpower Service and AnCO, we have been falling down for years. I brought this matter before Kerry County Council some time back in connection with the reconstruction of old or disabled people's homes and various other local authority projects. It should be possible to employ young people in local authority projects and to give them the opportunity of acquiring a trade. This would seem to be the key to full employment.

The AnCO scheme falls very short where you have a crash programme of young people going into AnCO for perhaps six or 12 months and then being handed over to the National Manpower Service who try to find employment for them. This is totally wrong. The programme should last until the person becomes qualified or until such time as the agency could place that person in a position where he could finish the necessary training to give him a trade. This is where we are falling down rather sadly. The faster we work at this the better it will be for our young people.

There are many other areas in which a lot of research is needed. For instance, there is a certain amount of industry in which there is fear of modernisation, where the trade unions and their members oppose any type of modernisation because of the fear of losing jobs. I feel completely different about this. If we become more efficient we will produce more, have more to sell abroad and in turn the industrialists will have more money to invest and, consequently, to create more products. In this way employment would increase. That has been proven many times in different industries and it is high time that the trade unions realised this, got on with the work and became more efficient. I worked once in New York city where one million people were employed in the particular section I was in. There was a lot of paper work involved and when computers were introduced there was hell to pay. It was said that unemployment would increase and so on. What happened was that much greater efficiency was achieved and now there are two million people working in that sector. That just goes to prove that if you become efficient your ability to use the resources at your disposal increases and you can, therefore, create much more employment.

Another area that would need to be tackled is the food industry. The greater part of the food we consume is being imported. We should not put all our interests into agencies such as AnCO or the National Manpower Service and so on. We need to diversify our interests to see if, in the long term, we can create full employment.

The levy of 1 per cent which is mentioned is a tax. One cannot call it anything else. The question is, will it stop at 1 per cent? Next year it might be 2 per cent and the year after it might be 10 per cent. This will take the incentive away from the middle-class workers who are under severe pressure at the moment in trying to live a normal type of life. While the middle-class people would not mind paying this levy of 1 per cent, I would not like to see it increased in the future. Looking at the overall programme I would have to say that I welcome this Bill with open arms. The Government of the day will have to take radical steps to ensure that our young people can stay in their own country, work in it and build it. For too long they have been building up other countries for other people. I welcome the Bill.

Mrs. Robinson

I, too, welcome the Bill. As a Labour Senator I give it a particularly warm welcome because youth employment was an issue on which great emphasis was laid in the Labour Party's policy programme in the last election. It is clear from the response in constituencies at the doorsteps that this measure is one which addresses itself to a very real need. Whether talking to youngsters themselves or to parents it was clear that there was both the sense of urgency that a different scale of approach was needed to this problem, and also that there was a willingness in the community to make a contribution, that those who were wage earners in the community should make a contribution by way of an investment in our young people and in opportunities for those young people.

The Minister in his introductory speech gave an idea of the scale of the problem. It cannot be emphasised often enough that this scale, and indeed the whole nature of the challenge, is completely different from anything of which we have historical experience since we gained independence. As the Minister said, around 65,000 young people leave our educational system annually and most look for work. So we have a very significant number of young people—far more than there are people retiring form the work force, or than we could even in the best periods of our previous historic experience expect to create jobs for.

Not only should we have a very clear perception of this new and dramatic challenge to us, but we should also be aware that the demographic structure in Ireland is perceptively different from the demographic structure in the other member States of the European Community. This became very clear when the Commission of the European Communities proposed measures at community level in relation to youth employment and sought to assess the necessary investment for that. When the Joint Committee on European Community Secondary Legislation examined these proposals and related them to the Irish context it looked at the figures and had considerable assistance from the Department of Labour, from Manpower and from other agencies and reported on it. What was very clear, but what still may not be perceived sufficiently either by politicians or by policy makers on the ground, is that whereas in other European Community countries the graph of growth of young people begins to taper off and decline in the mid-eighties—around about 1985—for us the pattern is one of constant growth right to the end of this century.

We are not talking about coping with a short-term immediate problem that arises out of whether one Government has borrowed more money than it should, or whether another Government is putting too much emphasis on foreign borrowing. It is not a problem of that dimension at all. It is the greatest single challenge facing us as a people; facing us in the context of an island which up to recently had not experienced a growing population and which has a very high growth projection, carrying right on to the end of the century. I particularly welcome this Bill as an important permanent measure established in the context of an overall structure—it is only part of that structure—showing a commitment to ensuring that we provide the resources, opportunities and the ability to contribute and to participate for the bulk of the young people who are going to be a factor coming through each year in very large numbers right to the end of the century.

For that reason I welcome the permanence of this measure. It is not a short-term measure. It is not an ad hoc measure to solve an immediate crisis. It is a step being taken as part of what I believe is still only an evolving social policy and commitment. I would very much like to see that social policy and that commitment deepened and strengthened.

There have been—both in this House today and in the other House—a number of very lengthy and very interesting contributions on the problem for young people in our society. Some have identified the two cultures that are emerging, whether it be a culture of an older population which still has all the reins of power and control over the situation and this growing young population which is not encouraged to or able to participate in the structures of society, and becomes alienated and develops its own norms and its own values; or whether it is the other way of looking at this cultural gap, the gap between those who are employed and those who are unemployed, there is a very large overlap between those two.

What I believe we should do when examining the proposals in this Bill is to make the necessary commitment as a society to the structured opportunities for young people to have as a result of this measure the initial opportunity provided when they have been out of work for a certain period or are not involved in the educational system, but that the commitment to them continues, so that they do not just have a temporary facility and then they once again are dropped out of the structures of our society. Therefore I would like to see this measure—I think this is the Government's intention—as part of an overall national and social plan, as part of a commitment by us to change by what I call a quantum leap: to change very dramatically the way in which we create opportunities and distribute income in our society.

I am going to make a fairly brief contribution, because it is better to concentrate on certain aspects of what is a very broad and a very important and serious problem. I am going to consider two issues. One involves the considerable potential for creating greater equality between young boys and girls in the course of implementing this scheme, and the second relates to a defined area where I believe there is a great potential for employment creation within the scheme.

Taking the first issue, the Minister has indicated who the directors of the agency will be when it is registered as a company under the Companies Act. I would hope that there would be very close liaison indeed with the Employment Equality Agency. I do not know whether it is necessary or even desirable to have a specific institutional link with the Employment Equality Agency but I would like to see very close working relations with the members and staff of that agency, together with a very deliberate policy that young boys and girls who are going to be encouraged to take part in and for whom this scheme is basically created will avoid role conditioning, resist conditioning by parents of children, resist children's own built-in conditioning of which they still get quite a lot in our school system and in their family backgrounds. There should be a very conscious attempt to use the considerable financial resources that are going to be allocated to make that kind of breakthrough. Let us not only provide an opportunity for a job, with the discipline, skills and training that that may import, but also let us use it as a basis for creating a greater sense of equality of potential contribution, equality of assessment of ability, equality of responsibility by our young men and women.

The second general area that I would like to focus on is the whole area of our physical heritage and environment. It is a potential area of enormous significance in providing work, potential projects, in allowing participation by young people. This is an area which should be explored in depth for its job potential for young people. I am aware that this is already being done in an ad hoc way. There was a report in this morning's papers of a project in Dingle, an archaeological dig being funded by the Employment Fund and involving young people. That is a good example of the potential. It is particularly significant because there is not a county in Ireland that does not have a rich archaeological resource and share of the national heritage. It is one of the things that are reasonably dispersed throughout Ireland. Therefore, it is possible to build on the physical assests that are there. It is possible to create the kind of employment which interests young people, in which there is a considerable amount of job satisfaction. It is satisfying to young persons. Even if the labour involved is not very skilled, they would rather be involved in either an archaeological dig or a cleaning up of a particular building associated with our heritage, if it is related to the area they live in, the contours of that area, the historical perspective.

Not only is there job potential in that, there is further job potential in recording the heritage: in drawing, in planning and in all kinds of areas where we do not have a proper record of our physical heritage. We do not have a proper indentification in some cases of the wealth of that heritage. All of this is very productive work because it leads to a greater sense of pride in a locality, the great potential for tourism, a greater sense of the potential of the locality. Each county area could address itself to the potential in that county. There is potential in each town for employment of young people in creating an awareness of its treasures, in having a record and having the opportunity to develop the potential of our physical and natural heritage.

If that can be the approach which we adopt when seeking to provide opportunities under the Youth Employment Agency, I believe that we should also try to bring in another value. It is a value again related to the kind of young people who are growing up now in our society, whom we should be encouraging to develop in this particular way. We hope that the general level of education of our young people is better, despite a number of problems particularly at second level in our education system. We have, as was mentioned in this House already this morning, far too high a percentage who drop out either before the age of 15 or shortly after their 15th birthday. Nevertheless we are educating a population with higher expectations, a higher level of educational ability, greater self-awareness even self-confidence, and yet we do not allow them to participate actively in the exercise of some power in relation to themselves and some control over their own environment and future.

It would be very important to introduce this element in the kind of projects and the kind of schemes that are evolved, which presumably will cover a very broad spectrum, with many different kinds of schemes and projects and work opportunities. In each case we should try to build in the value of active participation, of control even, if possible: control through co-operation, co-operative ventures, control through giving responsibility to young people for the work that they are doing — a responsibility which means that they are accountable for the calibre of the work, for getting the work done, for reporting on it, for analysing it, maybe for drawing conclusions for further projects from it.

We must avoid any impression that we are engaged in the business of providing one-dimensional temporary jobs for morons or young robots, who are to come along and fill those jobs because we say so. We must address ourselves to the aspirations, to the potential and to the enormous contribution that young people can make if they are allowed to make it. If we have that as a basic value, if we are prepared to share power with young people in the course of giving them better employment opportunities, and a better chance to show the contribution that they can make, then we will be forced to share even more power and to listen to the young people in our country.

This is absolutely vital because of the demographic structure, of the preponderant number of young people in our society. If we do not share power with them, or give them a realistic way to participate, if we do not allow them to decide to do something differently from what we the politicians or bureaucrats might have thought was the way to do it, we will switch too many off altogether. We must be prepared to take risks in transferring substantial power and resources to young people themselves in their local communities, under some kind of overall control, supervision and accountability as we are talking about public money and the need for some monitoring. This element is an important one: the value of exercising some responsibility and some influence on the project itself and on the job. If we can import that value it is more likely that the various kinds of jobs and opportunities which are created through this Bill will be more long term. It is more likely — if we are prepared to engage and harness the commitment and the contribution and the intelligence and the ability of our young people — that they will see a second stage and a third stage, that they will create out of the nucleus of what has been placed in their way, the possibility of further things. We will develop the energy and the potential of our young people which at the moment we are so dramatically and seriously failing to do.

Therefore, I would hope that the Minister, or the Minister of State, would indicate when replying to the debate the ways in which the Government might see the possibility, first of all, of importing this deliberate element of planning for greater equality as forming part of the scope of the Youth Employment Agency.

Will it have a firm and well-thought-through commitment not just to provide jobs in a neutral context but to have a conscious awareness of the need to broaden the horizon particularly of girls and parents of girls as to the possibilities for them? Secondly, could he indicate whether it is intended to explore in a very detailed way the potential of our physical and natural heritage for job creating and for instilling a sense of community, of history, of the potential of a locality, the resources of that locality in our young people as one of the many areas to be looked at? Thirdly, is the whole approach to be framed on the basis of emphasising the value of power-sharing with young people who are going to be involved? We must be prepared to take risks by handing over some control of the way in which a particular project will be carried out, rather than insisting that either the agency or a local authority will decide exactly how it will be done. Wherever possible, let it be the young people themselves who have a very large say in how the particular work will be approached, how the particular project will be carried through. Will they be encouraged to explore the potential, for further downstream or secondary activities and opportunities?

All these values are extremely important if we are going to avoid what I would almost call the "evil" of dependency. We must avoid the danger that this Bill, which has involved a commitment to public financing, financing from the Government's resources and financing more particularly by the citizens of this country through the levy on wages and salaries, turns into a measure which reinforces dependency, the danger that it would create short-term jobs of an unimaginative, unfulfilling and undeveloping kind for young people with the result that those involved would benefit only for the short-term period of the particular job but would not find that it gave them much scope for going on and participating actively and creatively in their own environment with future prospects for jobs or even for fulfilling work.

Indeed, this raises a broader and deeper subject. In the kind of future which is upon us, if I can put it that way, we are going to have to re-think the whole idea of jobs and employment as such, and we are going to have to develop the skills of our society and the contribution that can be made by individuals by placing more emphasis on ensuring that those skills and contribution can be harnessed, used and developed than we are on the old classification of those who have a job and those who do not have a job. That is a broader issue raising a philosophical argument that perhaps could be made at another time or another place.

I certainly feel that this concept of self reliance is the most important value to be incorporated on the ground, in the numerous ways in which schemes will be implemented and relied upon by either public or private agencies, by youth organisations, by voluntary bodies or whatever. We must build in for young people themselves local control, direct participation in decision-making and in any future analysing, reporting on and evaluating and drawing conclusions from the way in which the various projects are or are not working, are or are not suitable to be further developed or to lead to other areas of work or development.

If we have the courage to incorporate that as a very clear political value, then I believe we will be beginning to address ourselves to the enormous challenge of allowing our young people to share power with us in the Ireland which is their future.

Senator Fallon rose.

Mr. Manning

By agreement, this debate will be adjourned until next week and the Fire Services Bill will be taken now.

Debate adjourned.