Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will start with the last issue raised by the Deputy. I have no doubt that some of the country-specific recommendations will focus in on training and activation and the policies that are being pursued by Government and will be looking at ways in which we could improve them. The report on apprenticeship has just been published and although it is the area of responsibility of the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, I have taken a keen interest in it. Basically, it seeks to simplify apprenticeship and to make it shorter and easier to introduce new skills within the apprenticeship programme. Clearly, there will be an invitation to tender from industry to get involved in new apprenticeships. That will be one of the initiatives of SOLAS during the course of the year to invite expressions of interest to take up new areas where apprenticeships could be developed. This will be an interesting area. There is much currency in Europe about how well the German and Austrian system has weathered the recession and that countries that have that strong apprenticeship tradition have weathered the recession much better than others. There is a keen interest to build and develop stronger apprenticeships and traineeships in Europe. That will be a major focus of the discussion.

Workers' rights and work strikes appear in individual directives. The posted workers directive is finally crossing the line. As I have explained, it is about workers winning contracts in an overseas market, what they will be paid when they come from one country to be posted in another and how enforcement can be conducted. The directive attempts to have a harmonised system of enforcement applying right across Europe. It sets out the type of enforcement regime that can be put in place.

While the situation regarding Ukraine is very disturbing, I would not venture to speculate on its potential impact on economic affairs. Clearly it has potential to have an impact depending on how the situation develops but I am not qualified to comment. The wide issue of how to create a recovery and growth strategy dominated debate during our Presidency when the broad budget for the coming years was put in place. As the committee is aware, that included programmes such as COSME, which is for small business and access to finance; Horizon 2020, which was a big winner with Europe seeing investment in research and development and commercialisation of research and development as being very important; the youth guarantee; winning additional money and focusing on countries with over 25% youth employment; the whole debate about strengthening the skills area; and the ESF moneys. The debate has raged in Europe but those are the types of instrument that have been put in place to drive it.