As I said, there is provision in the budget for the Employment Action Team. Five schemes were submitted by that team. Four of them already have Government and budgetary approval. The first one, the work experience programme, is designed to give certain work experience to young people. This type of scheme has been operated in some EEC countries. Experience has shown that it is easier to place people in employment if they have gained a certain amount of work experience. The basic details have to be worked out, especially between the Department of Education and the Department of Labour, through the National Manpower Service as to how best the scheme can operate. The Department of the Environment have already announced and will be conveying, if they have not already done so, the details of the environmental schemes. The possibility of local authorities creating the necessary apprenticeships has been surveyed. The opportunities are there. The funds have been made available and the details have been finalised by the Department of the Environment.
That leaves two more proposals. One is an involvement in Ballyfermot with the community association there in the carrying out of a survey designed to give a small number of part-time jobs to young people and, hopefully, provide very useful information about that area. As a result of the experience of that survey I would hope that this is something that could be extended. I regard this as a pilot scheme and I look forward to its future extension. We are dealing now with a city area and I would hope that in a comparatively short time we could pick another area, possibly a rural area or a town in a rural area, which would provide us with valuable information.
The final scheme proposed to date is one that has been referred to the Minister for Health in his all-embracing community fitness programme. That is the training of physical instructors. Here the team's suggestion, novel though it may be, is obviously the result of worth-while thought and effort and something which, if it can be organised, will contribute not only to the employment scene but also meet a very strong desire in our community as well.
Now the Employment Action Team are but part of the overall employment creation programme. It was never envisaged, neither could it be, that they would have been able to pull jobs out of the air in the first and second month, but I think they did a worth-while job. There was another advantage in that team. It brought together both of the social partners, some of the youth organisations and Government Departments in a committed effort. I believe this is important.
Going back to something I said earlier, I believe we must not close our eyes—that is something that was done for four years or so—to the problem of youth unemployment. It is a problem that exists in most OECD countries. It is a problem that can have very serious consequences and so we must resolve to tackle it positively with every weapon at our disposal.
Criticism was made yesterday of these plans being short-term. In our pre-election speeches we always said that the campaign against unemployment to be successful had to be two-fold, and long-term of course as a result of growth, although the response from growth to date has not been as good as one would have liked it to be. On the other hand, now that the slack has been taken up in industry, I believe we should have a more positive response from now on. The area of growth and expansion is the most important one of course, but there must also be the short-term creation of jobs and the retention of existing jobs. In other words, there must be an all-out onslaught and attack on unemployment on all fronts. It is in the national interest and it is of vital importance that each of our young school-leavers is protected from the frustration of unemployment and must be given a taste of job satisfaction and a feeling that somehow the community cares and is doing something about his or her problems. The high expectation and optimism of youth must be harnessed. In a small way these schemes will help to stem what these young people must be tempted to feel, namely, rejection by society, while they go around in a hopeless search for employment under a Government that did not care about them.
I remember when I was on the other side of this House in the early part of last year I complimented the initiative award scheme implemented by The Irish Press though I did not mention the newspaper at the time because the scheme had not been announced. I now want to congratulate them on their very positive effort. My compliments and congratulations also to the young people from Killary and Manorhamilton on their success in that award scheme. Such initiatives are not confined to The Irish Press. I understand some provincial newspapers are looking in that direction and we have junior chambers around the country helping in that respect also. We also have a deep commitment in the “Buy Irish” campaign. All these are positively directed towards the creation of employment. While I am in the complimenting mood, I was pleased to see the Cork Council of Trade Unions setting up a committee specifically to monitor ways and means by which they could promote, assist and help in the “Buy Irish” campaign which is, of course, a central part of our philosophy.
If I may go back for a moment to the work experience programme—this is a small contribution but a worth-while one—I was asked yesterday if the monitoring service needed extra help would they get that help? The answer is they will. When I found the inadequacies that existed and the lack of staff my first concern on entering the Department was to take steps immediately to improve the situation. In addition to promoting and selling the scheme, they will continue to promote the employment incentive scheme.
In the budget the Minister for Finance has made available £7 million for this scheme. Expenditure in 1977 on that scheme, or on a similar version of the scheme I had the pleasure of extending, was slightly less than £900,000 whereas the commitment in the budget this year for that scheme is £7 million. It is important to say that, when that scheme was first introduced some years ago, I criticised its restrictive nature because it was confined to manufacturing and agricultural industries only. At that time I asked that it be extended to services, particularly to the building and to the hotel and catering industry. It was not done and I was given various reasons why it could not be done. As Minister I was pleased to be able to extend it, not because of any benefit it may have been to any employers in those areas, but because of the response there was, is and will be from those sectors.
I said in the House today that on a recent visit to the National Manpower offices in O'Connell Bridge House the interest expressed from the services sector was very encouraging for the staff there; it far exceeded any interest previously shown in the scheme. While the extension of the scheme was announced in late September documentation and application forms were not available until December. Since then the response has been so encouraging that January—and January can be regarded as a very bad month— has shown the number of applications substantially exceeding any previous interest shown in any month in the scheme since its inception. In addition, the scheme—which was due to expire on 24 February—has been extended to 31 December 1978. Moreover, because of a lack of response from employers towards young people under the scheme I have increased the incentive from £10 to £14 to help negative the stamp payment of the employer. The utilisation of the scheme up to the end of 1977 has been disappointing, illustrating in a concrete way a disturbing relationship in the recent past—but not I believe in the future—of the connection between economic growth and employment creation. I am happy to say that present indications are very encouraging. It is hoped that some 17,000 to 18,000 employees, between adults and school-leavers, will benefit from the scheme in the current year.
Still on the question of wage subsidies—clothing, footwear and some other areas of the textile industry have been affected particularly by the British temporary employment subsidy. We have heard the difficulties created in those sectors in this House in recent years. In such circumstances the Government have decided that action to protect jobs is justified and accordingly propose to assist firms in these areas of industry by the payment of £5 per week in respect of each worker on their payroll and in respect of which a sum of £5 million was made available by the Minister for Finance in the budget.
The package of changes in taxation on business incorporated in the budget is also designed to create conditions in which the private sector can move ahead and take over as the prime generator of economic growth and employment. I should like to draw the attention of the House to one of those tax changes which is of particular relevance to the Government's strategy on employment creation. As Deputies are aware, under a three-year scheme introduced last year, manufacturing companies could qualify for a special 25 per cent rate of corporation profits tax if they expanded their activity to the extent of increasing employment by 3 per cent and their sales volume by 5 per cent over the 1976 level. To qualify for this special rate of corporation profits tax in 1978 and 1979 manufacturers now need increase their employment level by 3 per cent only in each year. And, if there is a positive response to this special incentive by the private sector, the result will be an early expansion of manufacturing activity and, as we know from experience, if one achieves that objective, it has its effect on the services sector by creating increased activity there also.
That is a positive indicator of the overall commitment of my party, of the Government, to job creation and employment generally. We had recently the first meeting of the Industrial Development Consortium attended by the economic Ministers, the Heads of their Departments and of certain State agencies as well. This grouping can and must play a very important role, for example, in import substitution. We have had unnecessary imports even into our State bodies. If we can generate industrial activity, in turn creating jobs, by the substitution of imported goods purchased by those bodies, we will be making real progress and, secondly, will be providing the jobs to which we as a nation are committed.
The main objective is to ensure that existing Irish industry has available to it the resources with which to achieve growth targets and that any barriers to progress are removed as they arise in specific cases.
I should like to draw the attention of the House also to the fact that there has been a reduction in the figures of registered unemployed in recent months. This improvement has been achieved although the level of unemployment is still very high. This Government never pretended that the provision of employment, which is and will continue to be our major concern, would be easy to solve. Furthermore, it is impossible for the Government to provide the jobs necessary without the wholehearted co-operation of the other economic partners. Employers must have confidence in the Government's determination and ability. It is up to each employer to avail of the first opportunity to add an extra worker to his workforce. Indeed in the areas I have mentioned and in what was outlined in the Minister's budget speech there are now many ways by which an employer can be helped to retain or employ a worker. This is the positive response that must emanate from the private sector. I strongly urge them to take advantage of these Government schemes, when they will be playing their part in tackling the serious unemployment problem. Of course it is also the responsibility of the trade unions to co-operate in the interests not alone of their present members but also of their future ones because this strategy sets out our course.
In addition to the problem of unemployment—which was our major one— there was the second national evil of inflation. The manifesto set out the targets to be achieved in this year and that the budget strategy should be directed in a positive way. The controlling of inflation has in addition to controlling price increases aided the creation of a number of jobs now and in the future. We must remember that the vast majority of the electorate placed their confidence in the ability of the Government. That is an onerous confidence that must be respected and that must be responded to on behalf of the people. I outlined many of the areas where that positive response exists but there are others not covered by this budget. The strategy of this budget has brought a return of confidence which will help to rebuild our national economy. That was the theme we selected in June last and it is our aim. To date, progress has been very satisfactory. The response to this financial motion from the sectors to which I have referred is important.
I will briefly refer to the proposals for a national wage agreement. They were worked out after many weeks of negotiations by the Employer-Labour Conference. They have been widely publicised by my Department at the request of the Employer-Labour Conference. Deputies who have studied the proposals will have seen that the result of the negotiations is a text which, as well as providing for general pay increases at national level and possibilities for additions through local bargaining, also sets out an integrated and comprehensive set of standards to be observed by employers and trade unions at industry and firm level. The trade unions affiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions whose representatives negotiated the terms and recommended them for acceptance are at present considering the proposals under their various rules and procedures, the process culminating in a special delegate conference of the Congress of Trade Unions to be held next month. The Government took part in the negotiations as an employer. If the agreement is ratified, the Government will accept it and will arrange to apply the terms to the public employees in due course. The proposals and the preparation on which so much time and energy were spent, merit the most serious consideration of all trade unionists and employers. The proposals take account of the interests of both sides of industry as well as offering a set of procedures which hold out the prospect of achieving through voluntary action some welcome improvements in industrial relations.
