Vol. 407 No. 5
14 Mr. Quinn asked the Minister for Labour if the Tallaght area will be one of the locations of the area based response to long term unemployment companies as outlined in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress; if this company will involve the Tallaght Community Development Fund, including the Tallaght Centre for the Unemployed, or if new structures will be established; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
16 Mr. Quinn asked the Minister for Labour if he will outline the progress made to date by his Department in establishing the areas which will be the focus of the area based response to long term unemployment; the number of areas which will be involved; the precise form which the proposed companies will take; whether his Department or the Central Review Committee will nominate and/or appoint the directors; the budget for each company; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 14 and 16 together.
Twelve pilot areas have been selected on the basis of recommendations made by the Central Review Committee to participate in the area-based response to long term unemployment outlined in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress. These are: Dublin Inner City, Tallaght, Coolock/Darndale, Finglas, Ballymun, Cork North City, Limerick City, Dundalk, North Mayo, South Kerry, West Waterford and South West Wexford.
A national level team representative of the employer organisations, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, FÁS, the Departments of Education, Social Welfare and the Taoiseach has been established to organise the project and to monitor and co-ordinate the activities of individual local companies. This team, which will report to the Central Review Committee, will operate initially on a whole-time basis. The team is at present engaged in a series of meetings with representatives of local communities and other interests, including the unemployed, from the selected areas with a view to hearing their views on the formation of local companies.
The local companies will be companies limited by guarantee and representative of local community interests, public agencies and the social partners — six each. Representatives of the public agencies and the social partners will be locally based or related as far as possible. In the recent budget £500,000 was made available to provide for the staffing of the local companies in 1991. As indicated in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress, a specific budget will be prepared by the relevant public authorities for each participating local area. This budget will flow from a local action plan.
Could it possibly be that the Minister has not included any part of Country Wicklow in the list? Many areas of the county, such as Arklow, have witnessed the departure of major industries during the past ten years and I cannot imagine the rate of unemployment in the areas listed measuring up to the rate of unemployment in Country Wicklow. Given that Country Wicklow has one of the highest rates of unemployment outside of Dublin, the Minister should, in all fairness, consider including the country in the list. If we have to be the thirteenth, so be it.
I will bring the matter to the attention of the national team and will not contradict the figures given by the Deputy with whom I discussed this matter recently.
Could the Minister tell us in layman's language what these companies will actually do?
At present in areas where there is high unemployment many State agencies are involved — for example FÁS, the Departments of Education and the Environment and the local authorities. The statutory agencies, the social partners and local community leaders, such as employment centres, will form part of the company and work to a fixed plan. They will try to co-ordinate the various schemes and to involve employers in the locality or region in the company to find jobs for those participating in schemes. That us just a quick assessment of what they are doing. The company would initially develop a plan of the area, the demographics, the geo-graphics, unemployment of the area, the social difficulties, and then work with the agencies if they are there. If they are not there now they will be there. They will try to identify what they can do and to resolve some of the difficulties.
The idea is interesting and deserves a trial. I did not say the various schemes the Minister read out were not useful; I said they were only scratching the surface. In respect of these pilots, presumably the leadership of the co-ordination will be critical. Does the Minister really think that allocating £0.5 million to 12 companies, if I heard him correctly, in other words £50,000 for staffing per company, is adequate to make any impact on the scale of the problem we have been talking about? These are areas of unemployment that go over 60 per cent in some cases and that have terrible endemic social problems. Really there is such alienation that people have given up hope of getting back into the workforce and are expecting and anticipating a response from private sector employers in the area and so on. Is £50,000 sufficient to have the kind of staffing calibre that will elicit that response?
Most of that £0.5 million will probably go in to the national committee. The State agencies then will have to second and fund individual members of staff. The national team are comprised of just six people and are representative of the Irish Resource Development Trust, some people nominated by the ICTU who are involved actively in the unemployed centre, one individual from the Kildare centre for the unemployed, one of the senior FÁS people involved in such schemes, a person from the VECs, co-ordinator of the Central Review Committee and officials of the Department of Social Welfare. Most of the administration of the £0.5 million will go into their activities, and the companies on the ground will then be able to approach the State companies for their funding. No, I do not believe £0.5 million would be sufficient. When we were negotiating at budget time £0.5 million was put into the Estimates to get the national committee under way. It will take far more.
I did not answer Deputy Kavanagh earlier on the pilot areas. The idea would be to run these for seven months and review them towards the end of the year. From my experience of these training centres I imagine there will be teething problems in getting the schemes co-ordinated and working properly and identifying clearly what we are trying to do. In the initial period, maybe the first year or 18 months, there could be switching around of what we are trying to do, but there is a great role for public representatives and community leaders generally. The concept came from the programmes and from the views of a number of people. Its success will be based on the amount of effort put in at all levels including the State Departments.
