Mr. Michael Vaughan:

I wish to talk about craft training and education. One of the great difficulties we have had in the sector is making a real impact on the long-term employment situation. While we have created employment, we have not created employment that we believe we could have certainly in the hotel sector. The Government has created various employment initiatives, including Momentum, Springboard and JobBridge. Increasingly these have focused on ICT and the knowledge economy. We are forgetting that in the heartland of Ireland and out in more remote areas these types of employment often cannot be created and tourism is an area that can jump in and provide work. Youth unemployment is a huge problem in Europe as it is here in Ireland.

We find that we cannot get the type of vocational training that would be needed particularly with organisations such as the VECs. The VECs have a tremendous possibility now and we are very excited about the creation of the local employment and training boards. However, there has been no investment in, for instance, culinary training. They cover that to a certain extent but not to the level we need. Some of those are structural issues. Not every VEC will do this. We are preparing a document to be presented to Government shortly to make a positive impact on this. We need SOLAS to include hospitality and tourism training within its remit. When programmes are being devised the industry needs to be involved.

We had a pilot programme in Galway where we found the modus operandi of the Department of Social Protection in providing suitable individuals for the training programme was not what we expected and the outcome was not as good as it should have been if there had been real co-operation with employers. We will bring a plan to Government outlining some structural issues that need to be changed. We believe the VECs and vocational training represent the way forward. Not everybody will get a degree and our industry produces the entry into employment and gives people the confidence they need. Young people get this confidence in dealing with other people and get the skills from us.

We want to see apprenticeships reintroduced for our industry as well as for other industries because, as Mr. Pender has said, young people want to earn and learn. We believe we can provide that. We will reduce our dependency on foreign nationals working in the industry if we can create more vocational and craft training.