Mr. James Doorley:

The first question you asked, Chairman, was about temporary employment. That is a valid point. There will always be a cohort of young people who will be in a temporary contract by choice when they are receiving college education. The issue of temporary contracts was one of the indicators. There was an examination of temporary contracts on a voluntary basis and an involuntary basis. That gives a sense of the number of students, for example, who want to work part time but also the number of young people who work involuntarily on a temporary basis. That has already been captured by the youth indicators in the work done by the Commission. That probably deals with that issue.

Reference was also made to migration rates, which is a big topic in Ireland at the moment. EUROSTAT brought out figures in recent weeks on migration rates per 1,000 citizens. Ireland has the highest rate in the EU in terms of the number of people per 1,000 in 2012. The European Commission wants more mobility. It is in favour of people moving around the European Union but it is probably not too enthused with young people going to Australia and Canada. From its point of view it would like to create a scenario such as exists in the United States. If there are jobs in California then people move from Massachusetts to California to get the jobs. The Commission laments the fact that mobility is quite low in terms of the percentage of people who migrate to another member state.

From our perspective there are opportunities in Germany or on the Continent that are closer to Ireland than Australia or Canada but unfortunately language skills are a big problem. Ireland scores very low in regard to language skills. That is something that is in the document that I did not raise in my presentation. If that was an indicator Ireland and the United Kingdom would score badly in terms of people having a second language or a third language.