Mr. Robert Strauss:

I thank the committee for inviting me here today. I feel privileged to be able to share a few thoughts on youth unemployment in Ireland from a European perspective and I shall concentrate on youth unemployment.

I have a PowerPoint presentation. It may be a bit difficult for members to see the map of Europe on the screen, but the darker the shade of blue a country is shown in, the worse youth unemployment is in that country. The very dark blue countries have a youth unemployment rate of over 40%; in the mid-blue countries it is over 30%; and for the others it is 20%, 10% or even less than 10%. The graph makes it quite clear where Ireland is. Ireland is in a bad way but not as bad as Greece and Spain. Clearly it shares a grave youth unemployment situation with a number of member states.

The youth unemployment ratio is worth mentioning because everybody bandies figures around. It has been stated that in Spain and Greece one in two young people are unemployed, but that is just not true. The unemployment rate is the percentage of people who are looking for work or are ready to work but cannot find it. That makes a big difference to the figures for young people, although not to those for the adult population. Most young people aged 15 to 24 are at school. An unemployment ratio, in some sense, gives you a better feeling for what is happening. In a country like Spain it is still a serious figure, at 20%, but it means that one in five - not one in two - young Spaniards are out of work. If we look at the EU 27 as a whole we can see that the ratio is one in ten and not one in five. In Ireland, just over 10% of young people are unemployed. We must bear those figures in mind. A 30% unemployment rate is very serious but it does not mean that 30% of young people in Ireland are unemployed.

Long-term youth unemployment is a serious issue. Unemployment is serious enough, but if one has been unemployed for more than a year one is defined as being long-term unemployed. Ireland is at the extreme right-hand side of my graph and is grouped together with Slovakia, which is perhaps a strange bedfellow in some ways and not one of the classic peripheral countries. Ireland has a long-term youth unemployment share of more than 50% now, a huge increase on the 2008 figure. Unemployment has soared in Ireland and many of those people have been unemployed for more than a year. It is not only a short-term problem but a long-term problem.

I do not think anybody doubts the gravity of the problem. The European Commission has done lots of studies on what needs to be done and what is needed to get younger people from school into work rather than into unemployment. There is a huge amount of diversity across the EU but there is little doubt that young people with no skills or low skills are most at risk of unemployment and longer-term exclusion from the labour market and society. There are much better transitions from school to work in those countries with apprenticeship systems. Both the European Commission and the OECD have done a lot of work in this area. Segmented labour markets are not particularly an Irish problem but they are a problem in Spain, Italy and other countries, which adds to the problems young people encounter in getting a job. Together with apprenticeship systems, traineeships are increasingly seen as a way to help young people. They can be a useful stepping stone into employment.

It is difficult to draw conclusions given the limited time but I have three conclusions for setting policy. The right sort of education and training is key. The one point to make about Ireland is that there is a well-educated young population and high rates of people going to tertiary level education. However, the question is whether they are learning the right things. It is not enough just to get high level skills. A degree is usually good but the right sort of degree is even better for getting a job. It is important too to have the right tools for a successful labour market transition. It is difficult to concentrate support only on the needy youth. It seems to be much better to support all youth. Of course those who are unemployed need particular support. In particular prior to going into the world of work all young people need some sort of support. It is not automatic that one will go from school to a job without any support. Career guidance is useful and helps one to get into employment.

On delivery of policies, one of the favourite terms in Brussels is “economic governance”. It is jargon. There are better and less good ways of helping countries to have the right sort of policies. Is the programme Ireland is now under doing the right thing to get young people into work? Is the economic governance right? Is the troika right? I will just put a question mark over that.

There are Structural Funds. Members are aware of the regional social fund which provides some money. I understand that Ireland is almost too good at spending social fund money so there is not very much to spare to spend on additional youth-oriented programmes. My colleagues came to this country and found all of €2 million not already spoken for. There has been some transferring of funds in this country towards a Youthreach programme.

In terms of direct action by the EU, we are trying to do more to encourage apprenticeships and trainee programmes of the right sort. In particular, we are stepping up delivery with EU support and devising better policy priorities. An action team came to see whether the social fund could be better spent but there was little room for manoeuvre. However, there was a useful discussion between people from the Commission and the European social fund managers in this country.

Importantly, we are now at a key moment of preparing for the next multi-annual financial framework. Those committee members who follow the world of Brussels will know that there will be an extraordinary European summit in November to try to get a deal on the budget. The camps are sharply divided between those who want to reduce spending in Brussels and think that only they pay and those who see that they get lots of benefits from the European social fund and other funds. Within this framework now is the moment to think how Ireland could best spend its new money under the social fund and the regional fund. Current funding has been spent. It has been well programmed. Now is the moment to think how best Ireland could spend in terms of the next seven-year multi-annual framework. Young people should surely be one of the major priorities. I thank members for their attention.