Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Cosgrave, thank him for his presentation and look forward to interacting with him a little more. As a follow-on, successive Governments have struggled with long-term unemployment, youth employment and various other aspects of employment. Often the response has been - I am not being party political here as it is a response that has come from successive governments - that governments are not in the business of creating jobs; they are in the business of creating the environment in which jobs are created. Mr. Cosgrave would seem to bring that forward in his point that one must encourage business people.

Could Mr. Cosgrave talk to us about State funding for education, retraining, community employment schemes and the various different schemes, such as JobBridge? Has he any views on that in terms of the pot of funding? Is there anything that, from his experience in industry, he believes could be utilised better? It is good in that we tend to see it, from a political point of view, as an activation programme. It keeps people occupied until such time as conditions improve and when there is a greater availability of jobs. Should we be trying to do more than only labour activation?

Without getting into specific courses, we all are familiar with those courses that, when one looks at them in the cold light of day, one might question as to whether they had any long-term potential for the individuals other than to retain that activation, give people a sense of worth and keep them active during the period of unemployment. I would appreciate Mr. Cosgrave's comments on that.