There are three aspects of the Bill which are very worth while. The first is the principle that the employed carry some responsibility for those who are not fortunate enough to have jobs. That is one of the great virtues of earmarking the 1 per cent levy for this specific purpose. A prominent leader of one of the unions said recently that people are willing to make sacrifices if they feel that it will benefit those in need. This is a scheme where we can make it clear that the sacrifice of 1 per cent of income from those in employment will go to a specific area of need. With reference to the remarks of Senator Fallon, the fact that it is ear-marked for a specific purpose will make the public all the more sensitive to how well the money is being spent. Perhaps this is a worth while initiative because too many schemes are financed from general taxation and nobody thinks any more about them. This one will have a specific tax allocated to it. The public who are paying that tax will be watching to see how their money is spent.
The second aspect of the Bill, which I warmly welcome, is the aim to help young people who get a poor start in their employment career. There is no doubt that many people are entering unemployment-prone occupations, particularly those who leave school without adequate training or qualification. In later years the likelihood is that they will become the long-term unemployed who have to be financed by the State. They are also a tremendous loss to the community.
The third aspect of the Bill that I welcome is the fact that it gives an opening to voluntary organisations to come up with proposals that would be financed by the agency. There is an enormous number of voluntary organisations who are doing worthwhile work but they do need a certain amount of pump-priming in cash to get their ideas going. Although there is a big problem at present for all young people seeking jobs, I should like the agency to give priority to those who leave school at 15 or earlier, often without qualifications. There is a strong bias in our educational system against children from unskilled and semi-skilled backgrounds. It has been shown that about 80 per cent of those leave school at 15 years of age whereas no children from professional backgrounds leave early. There is a need to redress that imbalance and this agency will perhaps give us an opportunity to do so.
There is also evidence that as many as 25 per cent of those who leave school early have reading problems. That is a serious handicap for anyone seeking a job. I should like to see this agency tackling that problem through its training activities. There is also evidence that those who leave without qualification are prone to very high unemployment. A recent survey showed that within a year 20 per cent of those who leave school without a qualification are unemployed whereas the proportion of those who leave with their leaving certificate is only 4 per cent. There is no doubt that people who leave without qualification are suffering high unemployment and there is also evidence that their employment history is very chequered. They get a job and they are likely to be out of it a short time afterwards when full adult rates have to be paid. I should like to see the Youth Employment Agency provide an opportunity to redress the balance in our educational system and give specific attention to these people. It is estimated that there are about 5,000 people in this category.
The Minister mentioned that he would be looking at the question of how school-leavers are equipped when they leave school. He should also look at what pressures bring them into unemployment-prone activities. Studies of the inner city show that there is tremendous economic pressure for young people to go straight into such activities as unskilled labour in the building industry where there is a high risk of unemployment. That situation should be examined to see if there is any way the agency could reduce vulnerability there.
I am a bit sceptical about the temporary job experience and public work ideas that are at present in operation. If people have a trade, in good or bad times they will always have something to put their hands to and there is not the same risk of unemployment. We may not approve of nixers but people with a trade have opportunities to do small jobs that will keep them going.
There is an anomaly in the present situation in that people without their leaving certificate who want to do a second chance course might gain entry to it on the grounds of their experience do not get assistance from the State but the Department of Education grants require one to have the leaving certificate and some of the AnCO grants require one to have the promotion of an employer. There are people who have been caught in a catch-22 situation. They did not get their leaving certificate, want to improve themselves but find they cannot get State assistance. That is another area worth taking a look at.
If I was to question something about the agency, it is that it may be casting its net too wide by considering 40,000 people. If we were to do the job properly for a small number of really vulnerable people we would be doing a better day's work. Forty thousand people are about two-thirds of school-leavers. It is an immense task to consider providing opportunities for that number. Such a scheme, with its net thrown so wide, would be availed of more by the relatively privileged as is the case with so many schemes. They are better informed of what opportunities are there and they are usually more adept at getting what is going. I question that aspect of the Bill. I appreciate that there is a commitment in that area but it would be worthwhile to emphasise a target group within those 40,000 people.
As I understand the Minister, the Youth Employment Agency's activities will be in three distinct areas. One is training, the other is something in the area of public works and the final one is in the area of new enterprise. The training programme conducted by AnCO is highly successful, particularly in the high placement rate of people who have completed the programme. I have some misgivings about the cost of the training programme. I was looking at the AnCO report and it appears that the training of an individual costs about £2,000 for an average of a 12 month course. The cost of a full year in university is hardly much more than that. The question is, why is it so dear? I do not think that payment of allowances is the explanation because they do not seem to make up the balance. Perhaps one of the results of this Bill will be to get more people to join the courses thus reducing the unit costs. There may be too many courses run by AnCO with too few members.
The other area of training is the work-experience programme which costs £400 per person for six months. This does not seem very expensive but the problem here is placement. What happens to people who do the work-experience programme and are then left without jobs? I should like to see some placement emphasis brought into that programme to avoid having the young people back at square one after the six months' course. The Farm Apprenticeship Board should not be forgotten as it could do with assistance for its activities.
The public works area is the most thorny of all that the Youth Employment Agency are taking on. It is very difficult to devise tasks that have a worth-while experience content and at the same time permit people, if they find an employment opportunity, to take it. It is designed to avoid unfair competition with workers or small businesses. Many things like hedge cutting or drainage are the sort of things people think of in terms of public works and there are legitimate private businesses who have bought equipment to serve those needs. This area will be very difficult for the agency to tackle. Another question raised by several speakers is what opportunities that will be available for people who finish these programmes. This is a big problem in a programme that does not include training content.
Another worry I have about the public works aspect is the danger that it will become a continuing subsidy towards certain schemes. Perhaps the county councils will build it into their finances and instead of providing a new activity it will end up financing something that would have gone on anyway. These are problems that have to be solved.
There are at present 20,000 new entrants into the labour force each year and the problem of youth unemployment will not go away. The two existing schemes carrying this kind of work are the environmental assistance through the county councils and that of the Department of Education. They are costing about £1,600 per person. What is not clear is whether those people get a full year's work. In the council with which I work people just get seasonal work. Environmental schemes involve council engineers who are highly paid. If this scheme is to continue perhaps it would be possible to recruit young people for work on the ground and also young graduates who would be involved in the designing and supervision of these schemes.
With regard to the public works area, the main thrust should not be through any Government or local government agency such as a county council. The main emphasis should be on the voluntary organisations who have worth-while ideas that will mean additional new works for young people. They would also provide local funding in the locality where the scheme was going ahead. All in all, it would be a much better scheme.
I would like to see a major emphasis on advertising the availability of assistance by the Youth Employment Agency for voluntary organisations. There are many things that could be done in this area. In the specific area of the disabled person's grant for home improvements there is an enormous number of people who would like to avail of that grant but are not able to and the county councils are not willing to take on the work by direct labour. That is a worth-while grant but it is effectively closed to the people who are most in need. They do not have the capacity to organise the work. That is the sort of area I would like to see emphasis on rather than the environmental work schemes that are at present being undertaken by the councils. The final area which I think is the most interesting and exciting part of the Youth Employment Agency is the commitment to new enterprise promotion for young people. I would mention a few points in that connection.
The first point is that design in this country has been the real Cinderella of our industrial policy. In Denmark and several other European countries their great success has been in their ability to have small industries which thrive by virtue of the fact that they have exceptionally good design. They design their furniture, shoes and so on specifically to the needs of their domestic market. They have perfected design. I would like to see more educational emphasis put on design in this country and more centres, such as the Kilkenny Design Centre, located throughout the countryside. If we could encourage young people, particularly young people who get a trade through AnCO courses, into thinking about design and new products, we could really make a worth-while contribution to employment creation in the country.
One idea floated recently in Wales and in Northern Ireland is that for people coming off training courses such as those run by AnCO there would be the possibility of worker co-ops setting up new employment centres where they would actually take an idea and bring it to the commercial stage. I think that is worth while studying in this country because the problem with young people who are considering setting up in industry is that they are on their own and feel a bit isolated and if they had the support of an AnCO course plus that of their own peers something worth-while could be done.
The area of new small enterprise is one which we should be thinking about very seriously. The existing IDA scheme for new enterprise is restricted in that it requires management experience for people to avail of it. To my mind the kind of person who comes forward with ideas for products is much more the person with a trade who is used to working with products rather than someone with management experience. I question that restriction in the IDA scheme. I think we should go further, if possible, and perhaps give a tax holiday of the nature that has been given to larger industry to young people setting up new enterprises. A short tax holiday could ease them over the difficult setting-up period.
Another thing I would like to see the Youth Employment Agency do is to list in areas such as counties or regions services that are available and perhaps identify gaps into which young people could slot. In the agricultural area there are agricultural relief services or agricultural contracting in some counties. There are big gaps there. People are not able to make silage because of the lack of contractors. There would be opportunities that could be identified by this agency and help given to people to fill them. When dealing with new enterprise promotion the agency should not be afraid of a high failure rate. Perhaps a high failure rate would be a symptom that it was at least getting to the sort of people who might not otherwise get a chance to get going.
I am convinced that the IDA-type job with its very high capital expenditure per place is not going to be the answer for the sort of employment growth that the Minister was talking about — 20,000 per annum new entrants to the labour force as well as our existing high level of unemployment. We must look to the new areas, such as new enterprise, on-going programmes of work for young people and training, as is envisaged in this Bill.
It is a very exciting Bill. It opens enormous possibilities but it also faces enormous problems. I would like to wish it well in the coming years. I would also like to request that perhaps every two years or so there would be an independent review, perhaps by the Oireachtas Joint Committee, of its activities. There is no doubt that in other countries programmes such as this have run into problems. The British programme was radically changed yesterday because of problems it encountered. I do not know the details of that and there may be some political activity going on there that we do not know about, but I think there is a real need to examine at frequent intervals what is going on in this area. I would like to see the Minister accept a two-year review of its activity by an Oireachtas Joint Committee.