Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In response to the question by Senator Healy Eames there are no proposals at EU level on payments in respect of children being tied into vaccinations. That is an issue for a national competence and not an EU matter. The naming of the father on the birth certificate is a national issue for each country. I have responded to parliamentary questions indicating that I favour it. We are progressing that legislation which is being developed in the Department along with a number of other changes on registration. It follows the production of a detailed Law Reform Commission report on the area. One of the most important rights in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is the right of the child to have knowledge of who his or her parents are. In this country and in most European countries that information is held on the database of birth certificates and birth registers. Most European countries provide for it.

Senator Moloney asked about pensions Ireland pays to people overseas, most of whom are Irish. The Department is gathering the data following the Senator's question at last Thursday's meeting. I understand that approximately 50,000 people are getting such payments - most of them from Ireland. Many of these people might have worked in their youth in Ireland and then went to Britain to work. They then have some pension payments from the UK and some from Ireland. They would seek to maximise the pension from each jurisdiction. Most of those arrangements are the subject of bilateral agreements with different countries. The United Kingdom would be the major country because of the number of Irish people who emigrated from here to there in the 1950s and 1960s. The United States, Canada, Australia are the other principal countries. I will come back to the Senator with the details of those numbers, which are being researched in the Department.

Deputy O'Dea asked about the guarantee. The Deputy has been a member of Government and has been deeply involved in European Union affairs over a long period. The European Union progresses as follows. Proposals are made, which are then agreed through the European Commission, the European Parliament and the national governments. That has been in place since long before my time in government and also probably since long before the Deputy's time in government. There has been no advertised change in that.

The proposals on the youth guarantee are very positive and in many ways reflect what I have been doing since becoming Minister, which is to provide a structured pathway for people of various ages to go to work rather than having young people coming out of school and unable to get a job. They go on the live register and six months becomes a year which becomes two years. More than 9,000 people have taken advantage of the JobBridge mechanism we introduced, which backs up what the Deputy said about the enormous interest among young people in positive options. In addition we have places on traditional CE schemes. I am interested in developing a traineeship structure to expand the traditional opportunities that were available, particularly for young men in apprenticeships but which because of the collapse of the building industry are not available for the types of young men interested.

Not everybody wants to be an IT programmer or language writer. Many people want to work in retail, construction or banking at mid-level. In this respect, countries such as Germany have an established record of using traineeships to give people continuing education and work experience. This seems to work very well for these countries. How will the EU fund this? It can do so only through devoting some of its budget to it. This is why I stated, in view of the framework agreed by the Commission, the European Parliament and the member states, that I hope the European Social Fund will be one of the headings when it comes to determining the budget.

Earlier this year President Barroso sent officials to each member state to examine the issues there with regard to unemployment and young people. The Commission has a good overall picture of the terrible difficulties young people have. This is a positive development and I welcome it. During Ireland's Presidency I will do my utmost to advance this. As with all EU matters, it is for negotiation and advancement through discussion. In speaking about this we are returning to an older vision of the European Union which is as much about the social union and social progress as it is about bankers, who have understandably received the detailed attentions of the European Union in recent times. This is one of the reasons EPSCO will focus on such issues, which is a positive development.