I move:
That Seanad Éireann, noting the continuing increase in the level of unemployment recognises the need to identify the sources, consequences and the appropriate short-term, medium-term and long-term responses to unemployment in terms of investment, planning, income maintenance for the families of the unemployed and further recognises the need for integrated dignified services being made available for those who have lost or who are seeking employment.
I move this motion in my name and those of my colleagues. Those of us who have been involved in recent weeks in campaigning realise that unemployment is a burning question in everybody's mind. Many people consider employment as a right, as stated in Article 45.2 of the Constitution:
The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing i. That the citizens (all of whom, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means of livelihood) may through their occupations find the means of making reasonable provision for their domestic needs.
Today's figure of 196,309 unemployed appears very far removed from that pious aspiration that was included in our Constitution and, unfortunately, all the indications are that this dreadful trend is to continue for some time in the future.
Can we identify the sources of this disease, with all its consequences for social behaviour particularly amongst our young people? If we can identify the sources of the disease and if we can take effective action in the short term and if we are seen to be planning in the medium and long term, then I feel the youth of this country would have their confidence restored in our democratic institutions. If not, it is a fact accepted by all of us in public life that the democratic institutions of this State could be quickly overcome by civil unrest due to total disenchantment with the system as people understand it and know it.
It is time, also, for an all-party approach to this dreadful problem of unemployment and I include politicians of all political shades, the trades union movement and the employers. I commend the Taoiseach on the recent initiative he announced towards this aim, bringing together all the people involved in this whole spectrum of employment to make an effort to tackle this major scourge on our economy and people.
Governments alone cannot solve the problem and have failed to solve it, particularly over the past eight or ten years. From 1979 to 1982 the numbers on the live register rose from 88,600 to 179,900 and in that period alone we had two, if not three Governments, of different political shades of opinion. In spite of changes of Government and emphasis of one Government or another, the problem still faces us. Even since that figure at the end of 1982, it has continued to rise to its present-day level of 196,000. Within that figure of 196,000 we have the startling figure of over 60,000 people under the age of 25, which has been confirmed by the Central Statistics Office. Another startling figure is the number of people over the age of 55 — there are some 20,000 — who still have not arrived at pensionable age or even retirement pension age. People in the age group from 55 onwards will have the gravest difficulty in either being retrained for new jobs or gaining access to scarce jobs which are no longer on the market for them.
The total number of people at work is 1,146,000 people and the rest of the population — about 2,000,000 — are dependent on them. Those of us who are fortunate to be gainfully employed are carrying a tremendously large burden of dependency.
The figure for the labour force as it will be in 1991 does not have any solace for us either. By then it is reckoned that it will be 1,407,000 people. That takes into account our increasing population. When we look at that as a challenge and try to identify what we have to do about those numbers available on the labour force, then this Government and all the people involved in the economy have a major task in front of them. That figure is an increase of some 14 per cent over the figure available in 1979.
If we can identify the reasons for rising unemployment, perhaps we might as a Government and as a nation try to tackle them. Everybody recognises that the recession started with the oil crisis of the seventies which created escalating costs, lack of competitiveness and shrinking caused by the lowering of consumer demands. We have an increasing population which over the past ten years has risen more swiftly than that of any of our European partners. We must consider the lack of alternative employment and remember that we were dependent in the past on emigration. We must look at all those reasons for the present unemployment situation and then tackle each individual sector.
Unemployment continues to rise internationally. In the OECD area alone it affects 31½ million people, or 9 per cent of their labour force, an increase of about five million people in that area within a year. If we just confine our vision to the EEC, with which we are so closely associated, the unemployment figure there is almost 12 million, or an increase of 10.5 per cent in the last period under review. In other words, we lost a quarter of a million people in the workforce in the EEC in the last 12 months. These figures are so frightening that one must ask what, if anything, can the Government and the Community do about the unemployment problem. The Community seem to be powerless within their own constraints of budgets and otherwise to do anything about this problem.
The most recent publication of the European Parliament News of October 1983 reports that during a major debate in the Parliament the Commission put forward proposals which, adopted by the Council, would, they claimed, create 2½ million jobs for under 25-year-olds within the next five years. The ideas put forward by the Commission included a shorter working week, help for the young to start up in business, more in-work training and more jobs in the public sector. Commissioner Ivor Richards expressed concern that the unemployed and out of work may become an alienated sub-group in our society, and agreed that the Council need to act as a matter of urgency. Surely that is just a statement of the situation as we know it. Any of the suggestions initiated in the debate are ones that we have already looked at. We have made some impact on the youth unemployment situation, which I will deal with. I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Labour, who has a specific responsibility for youth affairs and youth employment. I will be listening with interest to his response to this debate.
In that European Parliament debate nothing of significance was contributed by any member. In reply to the debate Ivor Richards said:
It really is not good enough for Parliament to demand the moon in relation to unemployment and then to castigate the Commission because we are not prepared to join in their stratospheric attempts. I have no intention whatsoever of engaging in gesture politics with the unemployed of this Community. The Commission has tried to put forward realistic targets.
In my opinion that response and the debate in the European Community are indicative of the powerlessness of the Community to do anything constructive about unemployment. Let us hope that the reported upturn in the US economy will have a beneficial spin-off in this country, particularly through the assistance of the IDA. I want to compliment the IDA for the assistance they have given to the setting up of manufacturing industries in this country. Many of us have been engaged in direct consultation with members of companies from America and have discussed with them over recent weeks the possibility of setting up processing operations in this country. There is an indication that there is an upturn and that the country will benefit from it.
Today's report from the Economic and Social Research Institute would lead one to hope that there is possibly room for improvement and an upturn in the economy. The report specifically mentioned that there would be a betterment for those people at work, and whereas that is to be welcome, certainly there is no comfort in it for people who are not at work.
Apart from the American and Japanese technological developments which are likely to take place in this country, we must look at the basic economic problem within our shores and what we can do about it. One of the first questions one must ask is what is to be produced, for whom it is to be produced and how it is to be produced. Marketing has a most important role, and I cannot lay sufficient emphasis on its importance to anybody engaged in the production of any commodity, whether it be for the home market and for export. In the agricultural sector particularly, Irish marketing expertise has proved to be beneficial throughout the European Community, the Third World and elsewhere.
Regarding what is to be produced, I think that is always decided by the consumer, depending on the consumer's income and his capability to acquire the product. The second and third questions, for whom and how it is to be produced, are matters for the producers. They always base their opinions on their industrial development on profit margins and what areas of profits are available to them. In a mixed economy like our own we try to stimulate the private sector, sometimes without any regard to the responsibility in the public sector. Tax incentives must be given by the Government to encourage people to go into manufacturing industries which would have a beneficial downstream spin-off in all the service industries, as well as all the other benefits that flow from a factory in an area employing people who, by reason of their improved income, create demands on other services, whether it be hotel and catering, drink, car hire or holidays. They all benefit from the fact that an industry is located in an area.
In the past, private enterprise has not answered this challenge. Representatives from the private enterprise sector have always indicated that they have no incentive whatsoever to go into manufacturing or processing. We have become almost totally dependent on multinationals to set up, simply because they apparently have funds available to them with which they are prepared to make more risks. In the past the private sector have been given certain assistance by way of grants through the IDA. A lot of expertise has been made available to them, but because of the other disincentives, they seem to be slow to take up this challenge.
People in that area now tend, unfortunately, to put their money into gilt-edged or tax-free investments, often outside the jurisdiction of this country, with no benefit whatsoever to the economy here. If that continues to happen, then definitely this economy will suffer. There is a responsibility on all of us to see what can be done in the area of trying to stimulate Irish entrepreneurs. In any discussion in the area of wealth tax or taxing wealth it is necessary to differentiate, and I am in total agreement with taxing wealth on the basis of tax equity. When we are talking about wealth we must differentiate between productive wealth and non-productive wealth. My belief is that wealth which is put into gilt-edged securities outside this country is non-productive wealth and should be treated and taxed as such. People who put their wealth or whatever assets they might have accrued into productive areas should be looked at separately and treated separately.
It is important also that assistance would be forthcoming for smaller industries. I am delighted that this House and the other House have set up a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Small Businesses. For Ireland in particular there is a future in this kind of trend. In Northern Ireland where there is a major unemployment problem — 25 per cent as compared to our 15 per cent — they have published a special booklet on how they can help a business to start up, to grow and become profitable, and its emphasis on the area of small industries.
The proposed change in the social welfare code would allow people who are at present unemployed to involve themselves without loss of benefit in trying to start in the area of self-employment, in small industry. I hope all the guidance of the State would be available to them through the IDA, through AnCO, the Youth Employment Agency, Manpower and so on, and that all these agencies would be available to people, particularly those on the social welfare unemployment system at the moment. If this change of legislation comes through these people should be given every incentive, without penalising them, to start small industries in their own back garden.
I wish to pay tribute to the Youth Employment Agency, to their director, Niall Green, and to their board for the way in which they tackled youth employment. They have been subjected to criticism from a lot of people. It is important that we look at what they have been trying to do and the structures with which we agreed. It was the Labour Party who first thought of setting up the Youth Employment Agency. I do not think there will be any objections from those involved in employment in contributing to the work of the agency if they see what they have managed to do.
In the areas of AnCO and ACOT, through their green certificate in farming, and CERT, the hotel and catering industry, they have managed to employ 28,000 additional people. In work experience programmes they have employed 9,000 people. In community training programmes, temporary youth employment schemes, environmental improvement schemes which have been run through local authorities, you can add a further 7,000 people. Under the agency a figure of about 48,000 additional people under the age of 25 were employed. That is a good record which should be put on the record of the House, especially as they are at times subjected to quite a lot of adverse public criticism.
The Leas-Chathaoirleach is also on the record as condemning employers for the abuse of some of these schemes. They have been known to use them for cheap labour. At the end of the training period they tend to allow the group of people who worked for them and who were assisted by the State to go out of employment. They create an unfair competition on people who have a genuine commitment to this programme and want to try to keep the people whom they have trained in employment. If that is happening on a wide scale — and I heard some complaints last weekend about it in specific instances — I would be extremely worried about such abuse of what is a very good scheme if it is implemented properly.
In the area of the public service we as a Government have a major and a special responsibility, not alone to maintain employment in the public service, especially in essential services, but also to ensure that the social aspect of these services is not totally obscured by economic factors alone. In that category you can include any of the sectors you like — CIE and the importance of its passenger and goods service, its infrastructural importance in the regions and the full usage of the existing infrastructure available to CIE, with the consequent saving on the national roads by taking large trucks off the roads and using the network which is there. There is a major responsibility on CIE to look at what we consider to be their economic and social role as a State agency.
The ESB recently initiated a five-year plan without even consulting with the trade union movement in the ESB itself. A management document was submitted to Government for discussion involving a possible loss of 1,800 people right across the spectrum. All of us have met the unions and I am glad that they have now made clear their attitude to the five-year strategic plan which was published by the management of the ESB who were responsible for the decisions as to where strategic factories and energy-producing plants were established. They now produce a plan to close them all down. This is so important to the workers of Bord na Móna. These two semi-State bodies are trying to balance books at the expense of one another and both of them could lose out in the end. We could lose a colossal number of jobs among people who have been traditionally engaged in both the ESB and Bord na Móna in the use of our national product to run power stations. We have it growing in our own soil. If two semi-State bodies cannot get together and make a suitable arrangement, it is a sad reflection on those who are responsible for the management in these areas of the public service.
I do not exclude health, the social welfare service, the educational system and the local authorities, all major employers in the public sector. The consequences from a social point of view of any major cutback in either the number of people engaged in these sectors or the implementation of an embargo on staff are very great. I have the gravest reservations about any staff embargo applied on a blanket basis throughout the public service. There are specific areas in the public service where an increase in employment is of vital necessity, particularly the health sector.
The Minister for Health is concerned that we have new units which cannot be opened because of the embargo. We have understaffing in areas of crisis in hospitals where people's lives could be at stake. I do not think there is any justification for the implementation of a blanket staff embargo in the public service. Each of these suggested embargoes should be considered on its merits. Certainly we can have efficiencies and we should and can have savings. Efficiencies can be too expensive if they involve the care of people who are unable to look after themselves.
Agriculture is one of the most important sectors of our economy. The unemployment consequences of the super-levy for those engaged in farming and the farm processing industry, in milk, meat and any other area of produce from farming, will be serious for us as a nation. We cannot put up a strong enough battle on that. We must be totally united at farming organisation level and at political level. That sector directly and indirectly contributes to 40 per cent of the employment of this country and is a major area of responsibility for the Government. I hope that by bringing all the social partners, all the employers' organisations and trade unions and all the political groups together, either in this joint Oireachtas committee or as a specific task force outside of the specialised task force set up by the Government, we can meet this challenge. If we do not meet that challenge the young people who will be looking for jobs within the next two decades, will not forgive us for not having tackled this problem. It will not go away and must be tackled. To allow other Members an opportunity to make a contribution in the debate I will conclude. A member of my party will have the right to reply at the end of the debate.