Role of FÁS: Statements.

Ms Ormonde

I welcome the Minister to the House for the debate on the role of FÁS. I requested this debate on the Order of Business some months ago in light of the fact that we have nearly full employment and that many of the courses are defunct in the area of FÁS. I asked if the Minister would make a statement on the position and the review of policy and suggested that the Seanad would welcome a debate on the oper ation of FÁS. I am pleased to have the opportunity to put a few questions to the Minister rather than make statements of fact because my information is not great. In the past couple of days I requested FÁS to provide some information. I have the 1997 and 1998 reports. While those I asked for information were helpful and co-operative, nevertheless I was not getting a feel of what I sense is wrong with FÁS. I shall ask questions and I hope the Minister will reply accordingly.

Is the FÁS of 1988 suitable to respond to the challenges in today's labour market? We have moved from mass unemployment to labour shortages. We have to mobilise labour from all sources, be it the unemployed, older people, women, the disadvantaged. We have to look at the disabled, Travellers and people from abroad. There is a new focus in FÁS in regard to the opportunities and courses it has to offer those who need help today compared to the job schemes it had on its roll books from 1988 onwards. I am concerned that its focus and policy have not shifted very far, for example in the areas of specific skills training, apprenticeships, placement and guidance, community employment schemes, community training programmes, early school leavers, employment action plan, Jobstart and the workplace. Having had a brief look at each of these schemes and the terms of reference I noticed a great deal of duplication. For example, the approach to the employment action plan and the early school leavers is the same. It is to deal with those who have left school for six months and have gone to the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs to sign on. Having been out of work for six months they are referred to FÁS and there is nothing wrong with that.

This leads me to the placement and guidance area. I often wonder if, when interviewing those young people of 16, 17 and 18 years of age, FÁS has consulted with the local vocational school or second level school in the area on why a particular young person has left the system and has been out there for six months. They may want a change of venue for their educational training. They may not be capable of being contained in any setting. FÁS can offer them a course of some kind with money. I question whether getting paid is the real reason they pull out of the educational system, which in my view is still the best to deal with problem children or those who have opted out of the system.

Now I put on my other hat as a guidance counsellor. In nine out of every ten cases, when one drops out of school a guidance counsellor discovers, having done some research, there are many problems out there and a lack of supports, starting from the home background, the environment and being unable to cope with normal settings. We are now trying to place them in a FÁS training scheme, for which I will compliment FÁS later. In regard to placement and guidance, how sensitive is FÁS in dealing with young people on a one to one basis as they are referred from the live register section of the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs? What is the role of the placement services? The number of job vacancies and job seekers with FÁS is growing. If we do not succeed in filling the jobs created we cannot reach our economic potential.

In the new situation it is vital that FÁS uses its resources where most needed to equip its placement services to point job seekers to the right opportunities, whether to a job, training or a more suitable educational opportunity. That is where we could go wrong. Unemployment is down to less than 4% so that we are dealing with those who are unemployable. Therefore, we need the best expertise that can be provided. I ask the Minister to provide the expertise, for which we have the resources, to deal with early school leavers and job seekers of low-self esteem who do not have the skills in a holistic way, rather than ask where we can slot John and Mary. It is about young people who cannot contain themselves in a structured society for whatever reason, yet they plead with us for help. FÁS has a major role to play here and I ask its placement services and local employment schemes to get involved with the local schools in the event of a drop out and in its dealings with Youthreach.

Nobody is better equipped than the teacher or guidance counsellor to advise on how best the boy or girl can be properly placed or helped. They may need a certain type of training or education on a one to one basis to help integrate them into the system. I put much emphasis on that area because we are dealing with the young school leavers, the real unemployed. If the system has failed them in the educational field it will fail outside. Given that teachers have the best understanding of the problem there should be better co-ordination between the two institutions. That would be an holistic approach to the problem rather than saying, "He has left the school system, let us put him into a training system". It does not work that way. That is the reason there is such a high fall-out rate from these courses.

If a young person has expressed an interest in getting into the catering world, that should not be a matter for FÁS. Rather it is a matter for CERT. This is another example of duplication. These young people do a ten week training course. I cannot understand why FÁS should have a role in young people getting involved in the hotel or catering world.

A total of 36,000 people are participating in community employment schemes at present. The Government plans to reduce this number to 28,000 in the next few years. While the schemes were a valuable source of work experience and training in the period of mass unemployment, it would be wrong if current participants were not available to take up more valuable employment on the open market. It is important, therefore, that persons availing of the schemes get the right type of training to allow them to progress to jobs. There is much unrest about community employment schemes. They did good work at a time of need, but I question whether they are appropriate today.

I compliment the Government on its vision for the future in its acknowledgement that Irish people abroad, Europeans who can come to Ireland freely and persons with special skills from third countries should be facilitated to take up employment here. This will only happen if FÁS and the private recruitment sector actively promote the opportunities available. However, other factors must also be right if people are to live and work in Ireland, most notably the cost of housing.

It is also important that FÁS co-ordinates with agencies such as the IDA and Shannon Development to ensure that one hand knows what the other is doing. This relates to my point that there is no co-ordination in that regard. The agencies are all doing good jobs but they are working in isolation. There is huge duplication of resources and I question whether it is cost effective and if we are getting value for money.

While there are many complexities in relation to asylum seekers, some of the persons involved may be suitable to fill job vacancies. We should consider ways of tapping into this source. I congratulate the Minister and the staff of FÁS in that regard. The future of FÁS lies in this area and there has been a change of emphasis with regard to immigrants because of the lack of skilled workers. I hope increased focus will be placed on this area in the future.

I have a bee in my bonnet about apprenticeships because in recent years it has become a standards based programme. People are assessed on the standard achieved and examinations are held. I am interested in the Minister's views on this because I wonder if the apprenticeship system is right. There is a modular system where people receive on-the-job and off-the-job training and the institutes of technology have taken over the role of setting and marking examinations. However, they are not interested in FÁS and employers are frustrated because they want workers. They do not want people missing while they receive off-the-job education because they are so short of workers. What are the Minister's views on this aspect?

It is impossible to get a plumber or an electrician at present. I do not understand why FÁS does not set up a pool where people in an emergency can telephone and get a plumber. People cannot find such skilled workers and FÁS should provide such a service to those who need it. There should be a pool of young people whom FÁS could recommend. This is another way of providing a service and I hope FÁS will reach out to people who find themselves in such a situation. My thinking may be off the beam, so to speak, in this regard but FÁS does not reach out to people. Its focus is on training and preparing people for the job market, but this is another way in which it could provide a service and I hope it will be considered.

There is a lack of co-ordination with the education, business and guidance and placement sectors. There are links with the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs but, ultimately, there is a duplication of courses, for example, regarding the early school leavers scheme, employment action plans and measures for people who are long-term unemployed. There is little difference in the content of the various schemes. Is good money being spent on the duplication of course content without proper consideration of the end result?

This area should be reviewed because there was no difference in the courses offered in 1998 and 1999. They were not upgraded and I hope that will happen. I do not have a figure regarding the budget, but I am sure the Minister will provide one. How much public money is being provided to FÁS and being spent wisely? Nevertheless, FÁS plays a major role in society. It existed in the black 1980s and early 1990s when there was massive unemployment. It played its part at that time in terms of the type of courses it provided and opening doors of opportunity for young people who could not find positions after they completed their education. I hope that FÁS today, irrespective of its role, will give the same type of service it provided in the 1980s and early 1990s.

This is why I asked the Minister to outline, in light of almost full employment, the areas on which FÁS will focus over the next decade. There is disquiet because public money is being spent and we want to ensure the funds are spent wisely and bring results in the future. I welcome this debate, which I asked the Leader to arrange. FÁS and I go back a long way and I wish to give a constructive view. I may have made a few criticisms but, ultimately, we are all working for the good of our young people and the long-term unemployed in terms of ensuring they have opportunities in the future.

We particularly want to help people who are disadvantaged, including Travellers, the homeless and unemployed individuals who find it particularly difficult to get a job. FÁS should focus on these people who are particularly needy because that is its role today. It will have to move in the direction of dealing with disadvantage. In addition, it should recruit immigrants for areas in which skilled people are needed. It should also set up a bureau which citizens can contact if they need a particular service. FÁS has a major role to play in the future and I wish it well. I hope some of my points will be taken on board.

Mr. J. Doyle

I welcome the Minister. The activities of FÁS must be examined against the background of the economy's unprecedented growth over the past five years which has resulted in rapid employment growth. When the concept of training for employment was first introduced in the early 1980s, the unemployment rate in certain sectors of the economy was as high as 25%. This figure has been reduced to an average of 6%, although there are still pockets of high unemployment, particularly in urban areas. I will refer to this aspect later.

Given FÁS's record over the past 20 years, one would have to agree that it has been an unqualified success in terms of its achievements. A high percentage of those who took part in mainline training courses over the years found permanent employment. It must be beyond the wildest dreams of administrators and public representatives, who dealt with unemployment in the early 1980s, that FÁS would have the task of a major recruitment drive to fill the skills shortage the country is now experiencing.

I understand that this weekend 100 businessmen will take part in major exhibitions in London and Edinburgh in a drive to bring back Irish emigrants. FÁS is spending £400 million on these exhibitions which it is hoped will attract 200,000 workers back to Ireland. I understand there are approximately 44,000 vacancies for skilled workers in the economy. Given that there are almost five million people of Irish descent in the UK, this is a unique opportunity to recruit there. I hope this exhibition has the success it deserves.

As we reach almost full employment, there is a responsibility on FÁS to dedicate its efforts to specific areas of the economy, such as disadvantage, asylum seekers and apprentice training. While the economy has grown beyond our wildest expectations in recent years, the rising tide has not lifted all boats. There still remains high unemployment and social deprivation in many areas of our cities.

A common factor running through these areas is the early age at which young boys and girls leave school. I was interested to hear Senator Ormonde's comments on this because she has experience in education. Many young boys and girls are helped through the primary cycle by remedial teachers but they are unable to compete in the secondary cycle, so they drop out. In Ballymun, which has a high unemployment rate, 50% of school leavers leave school before 15 years of age. These young people have no skills and no qualification for life. They are usually unemployed and they drift into drugs and crime.

In a flourishing economy the challenge facing FÁS is to provide training schemes for those in disadvantaged areas of the labour market, particularly for early school leavers. I was interested to hear Senator Ormonde speak about the linkage between the drop out from school and FÁS. She is not satisfied that FÁS is meeting that challenge. I hope special priority is given to meeting the requirements in that area.

Another challenge facing FÁS is to provide training for the long-term unemployed. It recently published an action plan for long-term unemployed people which sets out a range of supports to reintegrate them into the workforce. One of the targets set out in the action plan was that a minimum of 20% of people starting FÁS mainline training courses would be long-term unemployed. The most recent figures published show that the long-term unemployed represent 22% of all new starters on these programmes. I am pleased to note this exceeds the national minimum participation target which FÁS set out in the action plan for the long-term unemployed.

The Association of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Ireland has requested that asylum seekers should be allowed to participate in FÁS courses. Last July the Government decided to grant asylum seekers, who have been in the country for 12 months or more and who are still awaiting a determination of their applications for refugee status, the right to work. I am pleased to note that the Government has allocated £0.5 million for 2000-01 to establish a dedicated unit within FÁS to assist asylum seekers to find employment through placing them in contact with relevant employers. I hope the ongoing needs of this group become a priority for FÁS. Perhaps the Minister might indicate what progress has been made in training asylum seekers and refugees under this scheme.

As the economy grows we will experience a tight labour market, particularly in skilled labour. As we move towards an era of full employment in certain occupations, it is incumbent on FÁS to identify skills that are under-supplied and to refocus training where it is most needed. I note from the 1998 report that apprentice numbers have continued to rise, with almost 17,000 apprentices registered at the end of 1998, which represents a 21% increase over 1997. If we are to meet labour demands over the next ten years, we must pay special attention to the training of apprentices, especially in certain sectors of the labour force.

As we enter an era of permanent peace on this island, I am delighted there is continuing co-operation between the Northern Ireland training and employment agency and FÁS. I note the International Fund for Ireland approved a project involving 870 young people from both North and South. This is welcome at this time.

The achievements of FÁS have been outstanding. I congratulate the chairman and director general and the board and staff of FÁS for what they have achieved to date.

Labhrás Ó Murchú

A wise man once said that if anything happened to FÁS we could close down rural Ireland. I am sure he was overstating his case but I know from where he was coming. There is no village, town or city which has not been enhanced and helped in some way by FÁS.

FÁS is successful for two reasons. The first is that its personnel are pragmatic people who deal in practicalities, not theories. The bureaucratic approach, therefore, is not as evident in FÁS as it is in other agencies. It is able to adapt to situations as it finds them and is capable of dealing with people who are disadvantaged in one way or other. The second reason is that it works on the basis of partnership. It is not a case of locating an office in a town or city because it works closely with outreach bodies, whether they are sporting, cultural, charitable or heritage bodies. The telephone lines are constantly in use and people do not have to make appointments or write letters and wait for three or four weeks for a reply. FÁS personnel often take the initiative by approaching local groups and recommending the development of new programmes or courses.

FÁS played a major role in helping us to reach an era of almost full employment. When employment was scarce, people left second level education and did a secretarial course or graduated from university without experience of the limited job opportunities available. Many realised they had to do a further course so they turned to FÁS and were lucky in the area of information technology. People often ask how the Celtic tiger grew so fast. The answer is that we were to the fore in information technology.

Three weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the Europe-Asia conference in Singapore which was also attended by Mr. T. P. Hardiman of Dublin City University. Some 15 Asian countries and ten European countries were represented at that forum. One message which came from it is that knowledge is wealth. It was about knowledge in the age of information technology. It was evident they recognised that Ireland was to the fore and was a pioneer in that regard. The people who pioneered that, without detracting from any other agencies, contributors or visionaries in that area, were those in FÁS, and they often did so in inaccessible areas. It was FÁS which provided the hardware, training and trainers. Out of that, people had the opportunity of preparing for whatever limited opportunities existed.

I can speak from experience. I was directly involved in training schemes in Cashel and, when new industries came to Clonmel, people rang us asking if we had people who had been trained. We often provided six, eight and ten trained people. That was a disadvantage for us because, having trained them, we no longer had their contribution to the work we were doing. That has happened repeatedly. Our placement rate at all times, even when employment was scarce, was 95%. I conducted a survey of 32 centres throughout the country and discovered that the placement rate never fell below 80%. What was important was that these were people who were trained, who were required and who could demand good salaries and wages.

I sound a note of warning. Even if we are living in an era of full employment, a new batch of young people will come on to the market who will follow exactly the same routes. Some will go to third level education, others will opt out and will go to a vocational school, and others will find that opportunities do not exist or they have not made up their minds what they want to do. They will still need training because if they do not get it the labour market will absorb them untrained. The labour market and the industrial world will suffer as a result because there will be untrained people entering the market. Employers will hire them because no one else is available. That will not help our economic progress and it will not help the young people who will go into dead-end positions with no training. These will not be disadvantaged people but people with ability and potential who, for some reason, find themselves in the wrong lane at a given time.

FÁS will always be required to provide training, not only for new people but also for people who are in dead-end jobs who want to improve their prospects and who realise that, without training, they will not improve. Employers will also demand new standards. They will no longer try to put a square peg in a round hole. When the situation has levelled off, they will seek to improve the quality and calibre of the people they employ.

Over the years FÁS has dealt with training in an organic way. It has never said that one way of training was correct. My experience of the agency over the years has been that it has adapted to new situations at all times. Therefore, it is familiar with new challenges. Apart from the training, we should examine the role it has played in sustaining sports clubs, cultural centres, heritage centres and other organisations and groups. What will happen when people are not available in the context of training? We already know. Many of these centres which provide worthwhile community services will not be able to continue because not as many people will be available and because the calibre will not be what it was since many people will be going straight into employment because the openings exist.

The remit of FÁS could be expanded with the training function retained. It must continue to fulfil its role of assisting and providing personnel to the centres to which I have referred. If it does not do it, who will? No specialist group exists for that purpose. FÁS helps arts centres and works in close relationship with them. No other body does that. I do not wish to detract from the Arts Coun cil, but it does not have a network for fulfilling this function in the same way as FÁS does. Sports clubs, be they GAA, soccer clubs or whatever, are dependent on FÁS in many cases. Where will they get help? I do not wish to detract from Cospóir or any other body, but no other body exists which has the network to serve those clubs. The same applies to assistance towards charitable work. No agency has developed the contact with the grass roots, a network of personnel with experience and a relationship with the community to the point that FÁS has. Therefore, if FÁS is sidelined and its role diminished instead of expanded, we will be back in this House in two or three years responding to the demands of every community in every county.

The remit of the training agency in Northern Ireland has been changed, perhaps because it is to some extent in the shadow of the overall British training regime. This has meant that the criteria for the team work scheme and other schemes of the job creation agency in Northern Ireland have been changed recently. As a result, centres similar to those to which I referred are closing. I can point to one in Derry and to many others. If we go the same road in the Republic, we will be back in this House in two or three years debating the situation.

In my town of Cashel, many of the 37 community organisations are directly or indirectly dependent on FÁS. They provide services under all headings – education, welfare, disadvantage and so on. If the structure they have is taken away, that community will be impoverished in a way we never realised could happen. This will be because we took for granted these community organisations and the partnership which existed between them and FÁS. If the plug is pulled, the floodgates will open and it will take years to recreate the type of agency we have had. All that is needed to avoid this is adaptation, and that can be done with common sense.

We have viewed FÁS as a training agency but it is much more than that. It is also a placement, community and fire brigade action agency. When one of our major industries in Clonmel closed down, apart from setting up the task force we immediately went to FÁS to fill the gap in the town. Fortunately, FÁS took fire brigade action. No other agency exists to do that – and that is not to detract from any other agency. Now is the time to examine the potential for a refocusing of and new thrust for FÁS to broaden its remit.

Senator Ormonde made a very good point about the relationship between an agency such as CERT and FÁS. One of the dangers is that CERT, while it has done excellent work, is to some extent removed from the community in a way that FÁS is not. FÁS is often able to identify opportunities simply because it is in a one-to-one relationship with people. It is important for us to consider how we might create the co-ordination which Senator Ormonde mentioned. I accept that that type of co-ordination is required.

There are 40 million people of Irish extraction in North America. I was in Washington two weeks ago as part of a group of 2,000 people, most of whom were of Irish extraction. I have been going to America since 1968 and every discussion with the Irish community there, as in Britain, has been about the wish of many of them to return here. A difficulty has arisen in that while in the past they were able to return because they had the money to purchase a house here, now they are automatically put off because their life savings would not be sufficient for a house. We need to make contact with the Irish communities in America, Britain and elsewhere, as they have much to offer Ireland – not just money and experience, but a total commitment to Ireland that is devoid of the cynicism one sometimes finds among our people here. They could do nothing but good if they came back and FÁS could play a role. I admire FÁS for setting up some of its workshops, but a direct approach should be taken and it should be explained that there are ways for those people to come back to Ireland, because we need them

There will always be a training need to ensure people do not go into dead end jobs simply because there are openings. FÁS's scope should be expanded and advanced and the community bodies depending on it should also be kept in mind – no other agency is capable of doing that work. There should also be direct contact with the Irish communities in Britain, North America and Australia. There is potential for FÁS there also.

I welcome the Minister to the House.

Mr. Quinn

I also welcome the Minister, Deputy Harney. This debate is very welcome, as almost every organisation the State sets up should have a limited life and automatic self-destruction. It must prove it needs to continue, whether it is CERT, FÁS or another body. Do we still need such an organisation which was set up many years ago? It must be very difficult for any Government to say that an organisation has finished its life. It was interesting to hear Senators Joe Doyle and Ó Murchú speak about the assets of FÁS. There is a danger when we have an organisation we have grown to depend on and almost love, as in the case of Clonmel. It is useful to discuss whether it should continue. I will argue that it should, but that it should question whether its original methodology and raison d'être should be the same now. I think it should change.

We have lived for so long with a situation where there are more people than jobs that it is not surprising we find it hard to come to terms with the very reverse, as Senator Ó Murchú said. The most important constraint on our economic future is a shortage of people. I am not saying a shortage of skills, as I have often heard the Tánaiste say. We have a skills shortage, but one of the mistakes we could make is to believe that that is the whole problem. If the skills shortage was the beginning and end of the problem the way to tackle it would be to put all our resources into upskilling people and into trying to attract as many immigrants who have those skills that we could. We need to take those actions, but we are fooling ourselves if that is all we do and if we do not address the whole problem. The skills shortage is part of a much wider problem – a shortage of labour.

It has caught us by surprise, but we have arrived at a position where we are short of people at all levels of skill and pay. This is not easy to talk about and can easily be misunderstood. The result of a shortage of skills and levels of pay is that the economy is being held back at all levels. At the same time an inflationary head of steam is being built up – we can see signs of that happening every day and I have argued that we should watch the danger of inflation on a weekly basis to ensure we do not take our eye off that ball.

We need to look at the opportunities we have to increase our labour force. For instance, we must encourage more women to take up jobs outside the home, although the rapid changes we have seen in the last 20 years means there is far less scope for growth in this direction than there once was, but action has been taken on that this year. We need to encourage older people to stay in the workforce, although that creates problems with retraining and in changing people's attitudes regarding the roles older people can play. That is an area that FÁS is working in, but it is an example of how we have changed from encouraging people to retire early some years ago. Wearing my business hat, I have discovered an enthusiasm to work and skills that were not being used in this area and FÁS is working on this.

We need to allocate more money to the difficult task of reintegrating the long-term unemployed, particularly those who have never been in the workforce in the first place, including the particularly difficult task of preparing a significant number of people who have never had a job for the world of work. I have some experience of the new applied leaving certificate and I am thrilled to see the opportunities to pull people back into education who would never have had that chance. We have set a target of having 90% of people complete their education, but we are still at 80%. Even at 90% one person in ten will be left out, but we are still at 80%, which means two people in ten are being left without those opportunities. This is an area FÁS is already working in.

We must also step up our efforts to get Irish people who have emigrated to return to Ireland, as Senator Ó Murchú pointed out, although we must recognise that many who left in previous times will probably never return. This week FÁS in Waterford has organised a project day encouraging Waterford employers to go to south Wales to attract not just Irish people there but Welsh people to come to work in Waterford. These are some of the things FÁS needs to do or which we need to have done through FÁS. However, even if we do this well and attract significant numbers of people back into the workforce, we are still not doing enough. We will still be short of people at all levels. That is the reality we face.

We have built up a head of steam against immigrants when the truth is that the economy needs immigrants. This week a headline in The Economist stated that Europe needs more immigrants and there are interesting articles in the magazine on that topic. Instead of making life difficult for immigrants and ourselves, we should put in place a structured scheme which would allow a set number of economic immigrants to enter the country each year and put these people to work as soon as they enter Ireland. The Government has put in place a fast-track scheme to provide work visas for immigrants with special skills. The welcome mat is out for software engineers, architects or nurses which is well and good, but we should also be attracting people with other skills. When the scheme is up and running we may find it will attract fewer takers and not be as successful as we wish. The reality is that those skills are in short supply throughout the world and we are competing with other countries.

We are not catering for planned immigration in less skilled areas. There are many thousands who want to come to Ireland because they want a job. These economic immigrants come from places where the economic circumstances are in many cases dire. They are driven by the same wish to better themselves as previous generations who left this country for America, Australia and Britain. They are prepared to start at the bottom, work their way up and do the jobs which, increasingly, Irish people are no longer prepared to do or interested in doing. They are also prepared to work for wages which are attractive to them but less attractive to many Irish people. As a result they are ideally suited to fill the jobs which otherwise will tend to be left unfilled, which will constrain our economic growth and add to congestion and overload.

I am not making a case on an ethical or moral ground for immigrants, but am trying to make an economic case which I do not think has been made strongly enough. A fast growing economy needs a way of taking in at the bottom people from outside. They enrich the society they come to simply because they bring diversity into an otherwise homogeneous society. Because of their ambition, their readiness to work hard and their anxiety to get on, similar to that of Irish people who went to America and elsewhere in previous generations, they provide a strong upward thrust from the lowest levels of the economy. Within one generation many of them rise to the top.

Recently I visited a newly established business which employs a couple of hundred people. There I saw the work being done by Bosnians. One Bosnian has such an ability at painting, decorating and design that he is able to pick other legal immigrants to join the business who can achieve something they could not achieve at home. I am not talking about a particular skill but hard work and effort.

A fast growing economy such as ours has two choices. Either we can legislate for a process which involves bringing in immigrants which through control and encouragement can result in the best situation for the host economy and the immigrants, or things can be allowed happen illegally. If the economy is strong enough to create the needs I spoke about people will find a way of entering the country and many will manage to stay because of the inefficiencies of the administration system. However, because of their illegal status they will always live on the hunted fringe of society, never becoming part of it. They will find it impossible to integrate fully and will always be liable to exploitation, as happened the Irish abroad, by those who take advantage of their illegal status.

The real choice is whether we want immigration to take place legally or illegally, as immigration will happen in any event. If we put in place a structured scheme to welcome economic immigrants we can help our economy grow and build a stronger, more richly diverse society for the future. However, if through a lack of vision or courage we simply allow the economic gap to be filled through illegal immigration which creates a new underclass on the fringes of society, we will sow the seeds of future social and racial unrest. To a degree I have concentrated on our facing this issue and FÁS can play a role in this area in future.

FÁS, with structures which are flexible to face new challenges, will be necessary in future. I have confidence that given its team and expertise and the tradition and history we heard of today and have witnessed in the past, FÁS will be able to live up to the challenge. I wish it well.

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (Ms Harney): I apologise for not being here for the start of the debate, but I had a long-standing commitment to speak to school students in County Kildare about why they should vote in the next elections and to explain the job of a public representative.

It is fair to say that the Irish labour market has changed out of all recognition over the past decade and in particular over the past five years. In line with these changes the priorities and approaches of FÁS will have to be adapted continuously to meet the new challenges which arise from our recent economic success, the changing demographic situation, the impact of globalisation and the move to an increasingly knowledge-based economy.

The Irish labour market has been transformed over the past decade. Since 1993 the unemployment rate has fallen from 16% to just under 5%. There are now an estimated 1,654,000 people at work in Ireland compared with just 1,183,000 people in April 1993. In the year to November 1999 Ireland created 102,000 jobs with at least a further 51,000 new jobs being forecast for the current year. There are now more people working outside the home than at any time since the foundation of the State.

In the new labour market the participation rate – the proportion of people aged 15 or over in paid jobs – is rapidly becoming a more important measure of our success than the unemployment rate. In 1993 the participation rate was under 45%. By the end of last year it had risen to almost 59%. Most of this increase has been the result of a greater proportion of women choosing to work outside the home. In 1993 just 30% of women worked outside the home. By last year it had risen to over 47%. Women took up 55% of new jobs created in the economy over the past seven years.

This increase in employment and falling unemployment has meant that emigration, which was running at over 40,000 a year in the late 1980s, has given way to immigration. Almost 47,500 people a year, excluding asylum seekers, are coming to live and work in Ireland. Inevitably such a rapid growth in employment has led to a tightening of the labour market. Skills shortages have developed across many sectors of the economy and demographic changes are likely to mean the labour market will remain tight.

It is projected that labour force growth will slow significantly in the next few years as the natural rate of growth decreases due to demographic changes, female participation rates reach the EU average and the unemployment rate reaches a core level beyond which further reduction is difficult. In these circumstances a major effort will be required to eliminate barriers which prevent people moving from unemployment and schemes such as community employment into the labour market; to facilitate increased participation in the labour force, particularly by women and males over 55; and to facilitate the level of immigration which will be required regardless of how successful other labour market initiatives are at raising participation rates. However, the challenge goes beyond simply growing the labour force; it also extends to ensuring that it adapts to the likely changes in the type of labour which will be required in the future. Sometimes all the focus appears to be on third level skills and, while these are critical, it is important to remember that there will be strong demand for a broad range of skills and meeting this demand is critical to maintaining our competitiveness.

We are in an era where capital has never been more abundant or cheap, premises are readily available and the business climate has never been more favourable for entrepreneurs with a good idea. Now the difficulty is recruiting and retaining good staff. This will have significant implications for Irish companies. It will become progressively more difficult for companies in low value added sectors to pay the wages required to attract and retain workers. They will find themselves competing with higher value added sectors better able to afford the high wages which our better educated and trained workforce will demand. The key to business success will be the ability of companies to compete for that valuable economic resource, labour.

It is because of these challenges that the Government has devoted such a high level of resources to the employment and human resources development operational programme in the national development plan. The total cost of the programme is estimated at £11.184 million or more than 25% of the resources earmarked for the NDP and it underlines the high priority that the Government attaches to human resource development and an active labour market policy. FÁS will play a central role in the implementation of the employment and human resources development operational programme between 2000 and 2006.

FÁS will continue to provide a wide range of services to job seekers and employers. This year it has a budget of £560 million and will provide training for more than 100,000 people. In addition to providing training for job seekers, FÁS is by far the largest employment service in Ireland. Last year employers notified the agency of a record 69,800 vacancies. The agency is taking several steps to increase the supply of skilled workers so that economic growth is not impeded. In 1999 the number of apprentices increased by 4,000 to 21,000, with a further increase in apprentice numbers to approximately 25,000 planned for this year.

In conjunction with the Department of Education and Science, FÁS is greatly expanding off the job training facilities for apprentices. It has taken the lead in its efforts to integrate women more fully into the workforce and has worked consistently over the years to increase the proportion of females participating in its training and employment programmes. Female participation in training programmes is running at 54%. FÁS is preparing further initiatives in the provision of training for child carers. The Government has already announced tax incentives for the construction of child care facilities. Between them these two measures will make a major impact on the growing demand for affordable child care places and encourage female labour force participation.

The Government decided to create a new national employment service with the local employment service assimilated into FÁS in 1999. This decision is being implemented. The national employment service aims to provide the unemployed with an integrated service. Through the use of new information and communications technology, including call centres and a new Internet-based jobs bank, FÁS will be able to provide both employers and job seekers with a flexible range of services which will continue to further reduce long-term unemployment, notwithstanding the spectacular progress that has been made in this area in the last few years.

FÁS has played a major role in the successful implementation of the preventive strategy under the Government's employment action plan in which unemployed persons are referred to FÁS by the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs when they reach certain periods of unemployment. When it was first introduced in 1998 it was confined to under 25s. It was extended to 25 to 34 year olds last year and will be further extended this year to 35 to 54 year olds. More than three quarters of those who have been referred to FÁS under the strategy have subsequently left the live register.

The decline in the number of unemployed, particularly the long-term unemployed, has resulted in a reduction in the number of people on community employment programmes. It fell by 3,000 in 1999 and is forecast to fall by a further 2,000 this year. By 2003, the number of people on CE will fall to approximately 28,000, from 40,000 in 1998. FÁS is also improving the training element of CE. Clearly in the current labour market, with an abundance of job vacancies available, the onus on employment schemes, such as CE, must be to prepare people to take up such jobs, and not to compound the already tight labour supply. Under the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, the Government has agreed to discuss the impact of reductions in CE places on essential services, for example, school secretarial services. Part of the saving as a result of the reduction in CE places is being used to fund a new social economy programme, through which new social enterprises will be established to provide social services in disadvantaged communities which will create sustainable employment.

The FÁS Jobs Ireland campaign, which aims to attract Irish expatriates and other suitably skilled and qualified EU and other nationals based overseas to live and work in Ireland, is typical of this new approach. The recent Government initiative on immigration which includes the introduction of working visas will also result in considerably more resources being devoted to this initiative. This year the role of the NRB in regard to vocational training and employment services for persons with disabilities will transfer to FÁS. This is an important Government response to the objective of mainstreaming services for persons with disabilities. In addition, new initiatives to promote employment opportunities for persons with disabilities were introduced by the Government this year through an allocation of £5 million.

FÁS co-operates with its Northern Ireland counterpart, the Northern Ireland Training and Employment Agency. Both bodies participate in the EURES Cross-Border Partnership, which assists job mobility in the Border region. This year a new INTERACT programme will be established with the support of the International Fund for Ireland. It will target 16 to 18 year olds and bring together groups of young people from both sides of the Border. FÁS also administers the wider horizons programme, communities in action programme and employment support facilities in the Border region through the EU special support programme for peace and reconciliation. I believe there is much greater scope for co-operation in this area and that our aim must be to create a genuine all Ireland labour market.

The main objectives of FÁS for the future will be to mobilise all sources of labour supply, including integrating unemployed people into the labour market, increasing the participation of women in the workforce, increasing the employability of people with disabilities and other marginalised groups and encouraging Irish emigrants and others to come here to meet our skills needs; to provide training for employees and unemployed persons in order to upgrade the skill levels in the economy; and to provide an efficient employment service to meet the needs of employees and job seekers.

Operating in the rapidly changing Irish labour market FÁS must constantly seek new ways to meet the evolving requirements of job seekers and employers. Over the next decade the economy's move up the value chain will continue and perhaps accelerate. The typical worker a decade from now will be highly educated, trained, productive and will be employed in a high value added growth sector. FÁS is committed to providing the training and skills which will ensure that this move occurs as seamlessly as possible and that the opportunities created can be grasped by all sections of our society.

Mr. Costello

I welcome the Minister to the House. Undoubtedly, the economic boom over the past years has been quite phenomenal with the number of people in employment rising apace. The number at work has increased by approximately 500,000 since 1993, which is a rise of 50%. By any criteria, that is quite phenomenal. It is heartening that the number of long-term unemployed has decreased and a large number of returned emigrants have entered the workforce. It is also heartening, as the Minister stated, that emigration has given way to immigration to the extent that 47,500 people move to Ireland annually to live and work.

I wish to focus on a number of issues. Long-term unemployment is the most difficult problem to eradicate. When there is strong demand in the labour market, it is easy to cater for returned emigrants who have gained experience abroad and are well educated. It is easy for these people to gain employment and many of them obtain positions prior to their arrival in Ireland. There are a number of other social problems that arise in respect of these people, particularly in terms of housing, transport, etc., with which we must deal. I am concerned that the level of net immigration will decline because of the fact that it costs £95,000 just to purchase a site in Dublin. The current position vis-à-vis the property market is so unreal that it is difficult to imagine how it came about. We must ask why land prices, particularly for zoned land, have risen out of all proportion.

People will be deterred from coming to Ireland if they are unable to find accommodation relatively close to the place in which they will be employed. If the transport system does not improve to a level where they can gain access to their place of employment with relative ease, the well paid and well educated people who emigrated in the 1970s and 1980s and who are anxious to return to this country to take up well paid employment will not do so. That is a major concern and I would hate the economy to lose momentum as a result of it.

As stated earlier, those at the lower end of the market – the long-term unemployed – are my primary concern because others with the necessary education and skills can access employment opportunities once they become available. The Minister stated that employers notified FÁS of a record 69,800 vacancies last year. Clearly there has been a huge boom in this area.

The figures supplied by the CSO in respect of the long-term unemployed are quite low. For example, the figure for Dublin is estimated at only 1.9%. Has the Minister had an opportunity to consider the document, Solving Long-term Unemployment in Dublin, produced by Eithne Fitzgerald, Brid Ingoldsby and Fiona Daly, which questions the figures put forward by the Central Statistics Office? According to the document, the actual number of long-term unemployed people in the Dublin area is 37,000, which is three times greater than the figure supplied by the CSO.

I wish to outline how the authors of the document to which I refer calculated their figure of 37,000. According to them, the figure of 8,500 supplied by the Central Statistics Office includes only people on long-term unemployment who are active in the job market. However, there are then those people who are unemployed but who, for a variety of reasons, are not active in the job market. Typically, the members of this group are older males who are long-term unemployed and poorly educated. In addition, there are lone parents – typically women – who are not active in the job market or, if they are, it would be to a limited degree. The figure for this group is estimated at 5,000. The document proceeds to provide figures for other groups at risk of long-term unemployment: early school leavers, 4,000; short-term unemployed at risk of long-term unemployment, 1,500; and people on jobs schemes with poor prospects, 4,000. Therefore, the authors arrived at a conservative figure of 37,000 compared to the official figure of 8,500.

The Minister indicated that the participation rate of women in the labour market is low. She stated, "In 1993, just 30% of women worked outside the home. By last year it had risen to over 47%." This shows that less than 50% of women work outside the home. That is not satisfactory. While women are taking up the majority of new jobs coming on stream, nevertheless, they still have a long way to go to catch up.

If, as the document produced by three very reputable researchers indicates, there is a hidden figure in respect of the long-term unemployed and if that figure is three times greater than the official figure, what action do FÁS and the Minister's Department intend to take in order to identify it? How does the Minister propose to encourage these long-term unemployed people to enter the labour market? The hidden figure to which I refer includes many people who are living in poverty and who are not in a position to reap the benefits of the prosperity the country is experiencing.

The Minister referred to the assimilation of the local employment service into FÁS in the form of the new national employment service. I do not want to be critical of FÁS but the original intention was that the local employment service would be separate from FÁS and that it would operate in a different fashion from the way FÁS operates. FÁS acts as an agency which provides a service and people avail of that service in terms of becoming involved in training and further education, gaining work experience, etc. The local employment service was posited on the premise that its officers would go out to meet the people. The idea was that local employment service officers would each possess a portfolio containing the names and details of a number of people for whom they were personally responsible in a professional sense. These officers were meant to be responsible for introducing people to employers and becoming involved in providing the edu cation and training they required. They would also deal, in a proactive manner, with people who were vulnerable and introduce them gradually to the labour market. I do not believe that goal has ever been achieved by the LES.

The service provided by the LES is patchy and varies from area to area. At this stage I cannot state that the LES should not be assimilated into a new service which is, essentially, an expanded FÁS service. However, I believe that the original decision was wrong and that the LES should have operated in the manner originally intended by the National Economic and Social Forum. That is part of the reason we do not possess a proactive, outgoing service that deals with hidden long-term unemployment. Until such a service is put in place, we will never solve the problems of constituencies such as mine and that of the Minister where there are groups of unemployed people.

How does the Minister intend to deal with long-term unemployment? Will FÁS be actively and sufficiently streamlined in order to allow it to make inroads into this problem? In my opinion the LES was the ideal mechanism for dealing with long-term unemployment. It should have been allowed to develop its operations in a sufficiently streamlined manner in order to achieve this aim and it should also have been given adequate authority in terms of appointing the professional personnel it was originally intended to recruit. The personnel to whom I refer were supposed to report annually on how they were dealing with their portfolios and the success they had had in assisting the people for whom they were responsible in gaining employment, or entering the education system with a view to later progressing into the labour market. The LES was a great model but it was not allowed to develop properly.

My second point – Senator Quinn also referred to it – relates to the new workforce we are seeking to recruit from abroad to supplement the numbers of people who are already voluntarily coming here to take up employment. FÁS has a major role to play in that regard. It is proposed to use a quota system, as the Australians and Americans have done before us, when recruiting skilled individuals to fill vacancies for which there are no qualified Irish applicants. That is a very inhumane way of going about it. We should be far more generous and broad-minded, and should re-examine our own history and traditions.

Very few skilled people left the country from the 1920s to the 1960s. It is only in the last 20 years that we have witnessed the phenomenon of skilled Irish emigrants. In earlier times, some emigrants got terrible jobs and worked at the very bottom of the pile as labourers and semi-skilled workers. They did not have the benefit of going abroad and accessing training. We should have learned a lesson from that and should now recruit not just trained people who are ready to move into skilled positions, but also those who are not able to earn a good living in their own countries. We could invite them here to be trained and educated. It would be as good a way of contributing to the welfare of the world, in a general sense, as giving overseas aid to disadvantaged countries. It represents a more proactive way of dealing with the problem, rather than the charitable approach that is part of our overseas policy towards impoverished countries.

One way or another the Minister will have to examine the body of asylum seekers and refugees that are already here. Obviously, refugees will not pose the same problem because, according to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform's figures, the number of people who are being granted refugee status is quite low – in the order of 80% or 85% are being refused. The Minister has sought a re-admission agreement with the Romanian Government, but my information is that a similar request to the Nigerian Government was refused point blank because it will not accept deportees. In any case, the Nigerian Government has turned on its own citizens and persecuted them. In the present circumstances, therefore, it would not be easy for any country to deport people to Nigeria.

A huge number of people, estimated conservatively at 14,500, have been processed here and, according to the Minister, they are ready for deportation. He will be unable to deport the vast majority, however, because the countries will not take back their citizens who have fled. The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment must discuss with her colleague, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform what is to be done in respect of those two matters – first, inviting skilled and unskilled workers into the country and, second, dealing with the large number of people who are already here and who will probably not be leaving, despite the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue's best efforts.

I understand that the Minister, Deputy Harney, has set 30 June as the date for terminating the whole-time jobs initiative, but to date nothing has been established to replace it. It is likely that those on the whole-time jobs initiative – all of whom are over 35 and have a level of training but have not been able to access permanent jobs – will be returning to the dole. I sincerely hope that, having introduced the initiative as a means of providing whole-time employment in areas of disadvantage where it was difficult to provide employment, these people will be kept within the whole-time system until other employment is provided for them. That would be better than sending them back to the dole.

I do not know how far the Minister has gone in discussions with the social partners, whether she is proceeding in that direction or if the matter can be resolved, but many cases of hardship are involved. I have raised the issue with the Minister of State, Deputy Treacy. It is something that I would like to see expanded, developed and brought into the social economy which the Minister mentioned in her address. Certainly, those people should not be sent back to the dole.

Given the rate of drop-out from the education system, we are living in cloud-cuckoo land. We have a wonderful education system which is geared to the 80% of people for whom it runs on automatic pilot. The system is not designed, however, to cater for the remaining 20% who drop out. Proper structures are not in place to prevent them dropping out and becoming part of the 25% who, according to OECD statistics, are functionally illiterate and innumerate. We are at the bottom of the pile in the OECD with the exception of one other country.

Our education system is wonderful for what it does and we have been dining out on the success of our young educated people for years, but we have not put in place a mechanism to deal with drop-outs. There is a substantial number of child drop-outs in inner city areas where there is no interface mechanism between primary and secondary schools, homework clubs do not exist, there are no resources nor any link up or contact with parents. There is no motivation from the homes of the children involved because there was no motivation when their parents were growing up.

There are other circumstances which lead to disadvantage also. There is a lack of any system within the education sector to cluster schools. Consequently, every school is a stand alone establishment throughout the primary and secondary tiers. If each of the 3,500 primary and 800 secondary schools is a stand alone unit, how can one deal with the totality of disadvantage in educational urban and rural black-spots? That issue is not being dealt with because resources are not being provided and there is no plan. We are not improving our rate of access to third level education and neither are we improving on current rates of illiteracy.

While we have seen the Green Paper on Adult Literacy, we have not seen the relevant White Paper which was promised two years ago. I do not know what the difficulty is. While education and training is not the Minister's specific responsibility, it feeds into the problems FÁS will face later on because youngsters have dropped out and there are no mechanisms to protect them.

I am particularly interested in how the Government intends to deal with the problem of long-term unemployment as well as how it will deal with the issue of workers needed for our booming economy. Those who are already involved in schemes run by the Minister's Department in disadvantaged areas should be prevented from going back on the dole.

Mr. D. Kiely

I compliment the Minister on her statement, which is very encouraging. Many of us never thought we would see the day when we would be debating a lack of people in the workforce and a booming economy. Everyone concerned in turning the economy around must be congratulated. Ireland is the envy of the world and people abroad want to know how we did it. Many institutions have played a part in this, including FÁS which, in particular, should be complimented.

Over the years, FÁS has undertaken a massive training programme as a result of which many people who did not wish to continue in full-time education were able to receive training in various skills. FÁS has been responsible for building up community centres and other local developments in towns and villages around the country. At the same time it provided training to those who participated in such enterprises. Twenty-one years ago I entered into a housing programme in my village of Tarbert in Kerry and we built four houses for old people. At that time there was not a penny in grants available but FÁS came to the forefront and provided us with the labour which enabled us to go ahead with the building of those houses. The people who participated in that development went on to become contractors in their own right. Two of them are now major contractors.

It was interesting to hear Senator Quinn refer to people in Waterford having to go to Wales to recruit staff. They should have visited my county where there is a lot of unemployment. If we could get a recruitment drive going there it would bring down our unemployment rate. I take this opportunity to inform the Minister that an advance factory is almost completed in Listowel and we look forward to her making an announcement that will ensure we will create some employment in that area.

On that question, I was staggered to see figures last week concerning a number of jobs which became vacant in Kerry County Council for general operatives, road workers and so forth. I could hardly believe that there were over 500 applications for ten jobs. A water-keeper job was advertised and 185 people from the north Kerry area were interviewed for it. There is no question that there are unemployment blackspots and it would be good to see development occur throughout the country because many people in rural areas are afraid to move to different counties. They have their own homes and they want to remain in their own areas.

FÁS has a great future. I compliment the Government on the amount of money it will make available under the new national plan to enhance the role of FÁS. That is something I called for years ago when we were trying to get people on FÁS programmes. Many of the programmes were full and the people had to wait a year before being called. It is now available to cater for all the people who want to take up a trade but who need basic training and they do not have to go abroad to get an employer to sponsor them. They can do that at home. I thank the people in FÁS for their endeavours and I compliment the Minister on being present in the House this morning.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

When is it proposed to sit again?

Ms Ormonde

Next Wednesday, 17 May 2000, at 2.30 p.m.

The Seanad adjourned at 12.35 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 17 May 2000.

Seanad Éireann debate - Friday, 12 May 2000