Ms Marie-Claire McAleer:

I shall answer the first two questions and my colleague, Mr. James Doorley, will respond to the question on the youth guarantee.

With regard to the participants in our study, many of them spoke about having limited opportunities and labour market opportunities at home. Many of them left because they had to and because they where unemployed. They went through the same experiences that the committee is so familiar with. Young jobseekers found it very demoralising having to sign on and were tired of the exhaustive unsuccessful search for jobs. They felt that their opportunities were limited which was the determining factor that prompted their decision to leave. Other people simply wanted to go. The responses were mixed and there were positive and negative stories. Both studies re-enforced the notion that emigration is complex, emigrants have many different experiences and not everyone must leave because they have to. I would argue that the vast majority emigrate because Ireland does not offer them the same opportunities they can attain abroad. The emigrants faced many challenges and one of them was that job searching was quite challenging. They had a perception that they would walk into a job when that was not always the case. Resources were also a problem for young emigrants.

The Senator had a question on the statistic that 47% of emigrants had left a job. If one reads the entire research report then one will find that under-employment was mentioned quite a lot. Some of the participants worked in full-time jobs but ones that were unrelated to their skills and qualifications. They also said that they had no career prospects. Some of them worked in jobs under threat of further wage cuts or the jobs were precarious in nature. Therefore, they were uncertain that they could pay their mortgage. There was also a threat that they might lose their jobs due to the recession. There were a lot of factors at play.

We need a greater balance between academic, vocational and technical learning. We need to focus on the soft skills of social and personal development which the youth work sector is so good at. We also really need to focus on foreign languages because that is where future jobs lie. ICT is another area. We also need to ensure two things. First, there must be rigorous evaluation of training programmes. Second, if the programmes do not work then the money must be redirected towards programmes that do. Some 17% of Irish emigrants worked in construction before they left and they probably left school early in order to join the industry. They need to be supported and provided with new skills in order to enter the labour market. Training needs to reflect the skills and demands of the labour market. I shall refer the question on the youth guarantee to my colleague.