andMr. Gallagher asked the Minister for Labour if he has devised any schemes to provide for school leavers during the summer holiday period.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - School Leavers.
15.
Arrangements have been made for AnCO and Cert to take into training upwards of 3,200 school leavers in the summer period. This figure is broken down into the following categories:
1. Career training programme—over 1,500.
This scheme which will be carried out in facilities provided by the vocational education authorities is aimed exclusively at school leavers. The period of training will include planned work programmes, introduction to industrial procedures and discipline, training for job seeking etc.
2. General summer courses in vocational education and regional technical colleges—500 approximately.
This programme will cater for about 500 school leavers this year.
3. Industrial induction—120
Industrial induction type courses are provided for large numbers of young people. It is planned that around 20 per cent of the intake during the summer months will be school leavers.
4. Apprentices—400/500
AnCO plans to recruit 400/500 first year off-the-job apprentices in the summer period who will all be school leavers.
5. Community Youth Programme.
AnCO plans to train 700 young persons under its community youth programme in the current year. The majority of these trainees are school leavers, about 200 of whom will be trained in the summer period.
6. CERT
Arrangements are being made by CERT to recruit approximately 450 persons for hotel and catering training courses. These courses will mainly be provided in the regional technical colleges and virtually all participants will be school leavers.
Does the Minister think the measures he has outlined are sufficient to eliminate the frustration of the many thousands of young people who are now unable to find employment?
Of course I do not. I would not suggest that the problem of young people could be solved that way.
Are the measures that the Minister outlined merely training schemes for jobs that are not there, or what does he propose to do with the young people after they have finished those courses?
All of these short term schemes are no substitute at all for the necessity of a general economic recovery, which alone would give sufficient jobs for young people. Even with a return to growth rates which we had in previous years we would still be left with the very serious problem of school leavers with insufficient jobs because there are more young people looking for jobs now, emigration has virtually ceased, the population is rising, and I would be the very last to claim that any of the measures we have here would be sufficient to meet the overwhelming demand there is on the part of young people for jobs in this area.
Would the Minister agree that with all the resources available to the Government from the Social Fund and other European funds it has not been used to the best advantage in order to provide employment for young people? Would the Minister also accept that Government priorities seem to be entirely wrong in view of the fact that this week the House allocated £5 million to the blookstock industry when it might well be used in looking after jobs for young people?
I know that one can take all kinds of expenditure options but I would not suggest that one should use the money under one heading for another purpose. The general problem of employment for young people cannot be settled until there is a general upturn in the economy, and any measure devised here will not settle it without that taking place.
I disagree with the Deputy when he says that we have not fully utilised the Social Fund. We have done extremely well out of the Social Fund, although we have criticised certain inadequacies in it from our point of view, but the very change that permits us to use the Social Fund for the community youth project training programme, was in part, an initiative from the Irish delegations in the European Community. We and others sought the changes in the regulations in the Social Fund that permit the Social Fund to be used for these projects around the country.
Would the Minister seriously consider extending the subsidy to include young people?
Does the Deputy mean the employment premium programme?
Yes. It would be well spent money.
It would depart radically from the objective of the programme, which was to assist those workers thrown out of jobs because of the recession in certain manufacturing industries, notably textiles and footwear. In this area one could suggest all sorts of remedies for the situation, but none of them will quite measure up to the solution that an economic recovery could give.
Is the Minister aware that there are business people who would be prepared to take on a young person provided that they got the premium? I believe a number of young people would be employed if this premium was extended across the board.
Yes, Deputy, but the highest percentages of unemployment are amongst adults. I do not wish to minimise the hardships being caused to young people who are looking for jobs. Many of them are put into jobs for which they are unsuitable, and many of them after expensive training programmes are without jobs which they are trained for, but I do not think we can forget in any measures we can devise here those people of a slightly older age group who have been thrown out of jobs when industries have closed down. These are people that we must also assist and not forget.
We are all aware of the disastrous results of the Government's economic policies in general, but this question refers specifically to providing summer employment for school leavers, and the Minister seemed to confine his reply to employment opportunities or training courses provided by AnCO. Are the other Government Departments not taking in the usual complement of students and school pupils this year for summer work which they have done in previous years? The Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Education in my time always took in a very considerable number of young people for summer employment. Has that ceased?
I am not aware what the other Departments are doing. The question related to what under my Department we were doing under the various schemes, and here are the actual schemes devised to meet current higher employment amongst the young people. I do not suggest that the scheme devised here will be adequate to cater for the great numbers of people looking for jobs, but these are the ones I am responsible for.
In view of the seriousness of this situation and the almost universal frustration to which the present situation has given rise, would the Minister inquire from the other Departments if they are taking on these summer complements, and if they are not would the Minister urge them to do so? There is a great deal of work that comparatively untrained school leavers could undertake during the summer months in these Departments. Would the Minister urge them to make a special effort to take on some of these people? Would the Minister give us any information about or is he monitoring the progress of the scheme which is currently in operation in Great Britain to cater for this problem?
Is the Deputy referring to the community youth scheme?
Yes.
We have been looking at that scheme very closely and looking at its relative success. All these schemes have many similarities and ours is rather similar to that scheme. We think our targets would bring us to the same rate of success as the British are seeking for theirs at present. I shall also make the inquiry the Deputy suggests from other Departments.