Michael Conaghan (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegation. I have a question for Mr. Strauss. With regard to the EU literature, one constantly comes across references to apprenticeships and the value that is placed on them in Europe. In Ireland, however, apprenticeships have lost their currency and status when compared to the recent position when highly skilled manual work and apprenticeships were much sought after and highly valued.

As the character of work has changed and new forms of work have emerged, the apprenticeship idea has been sidelined because it does not seem to be as directly applicable given the changing character of contemporary work. As the EU literature has so many references to apprenticeships, I wonder whether some European countries have managed to transform their apprenticeship styles and redefine them. It is great to see the term used because it is a very powerful one and has a great resonance with people. For young people in the 1970s and 1980s, to get an apprenticeship with Iarnród Éireann, Telecom or ESB was a big step forward in their personal and working lives. That has dissipated. Young people have difficulty in defining their own importance because they cannot define it in regard to what they aspire to be in their work.

I welcome Mr. Jack O'Connor's very provocative statements about creating more urgency on all of these issues and urging Government to be more active. That is very necessary and we need that sort of sharp, provocative comment. Mr. O'Connor referred to the priorities in terms of creating jobs, finding ways of stimulating the economy and getting more fluidity into it by getting more money moving around and so on. As a counter-comment, I point out that while unemployment is difficult for any individual, it is particularly in working class communities, where there are very large numbers of young people clustered together, that there is a sense of powerlessness which feeds off the lack of hope. These are very precarious situations for individuals and communities, and by the time the general economy trickles down to that level, it may be far too late for them.

There is need for intervention schemes of a very different character. I do not put a great deal of store by some of the schemes we have had in the past in terms of activation measures. Obviously, there has to education and training in regard to literacy and numeracy but we must change the character of those schemes so they engage the individual in their totality. I cannot see why well-being, swimming, mountain climbing, rock climbing, canoeing and so forth cannot be included so we build different points of engagement along the profile of the scheme, the more to engage the person in his or her entirety. Literacy and numeracy are important dimensions to any scheme but we must animate them in much more exciting ways to provide that direct application to the well-being of the young person. If we opt for that kind of scheme, we may find it easier to draw people closer to work.