Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. John Sweeney for the presentation and for the work he has done in this area. It is not the first time I have heard about CIE in the context of not being the public transport authority. It is not a criticism, but it always hits me that economists such as Dr. Sweeney always have time to look back at the analysis, whereas in practice politicians such as myself and Deputy O'Dea must make instant decisions to try to make a difference in the here and now and then do the quantitative analysis afterwards. The biggest fault for which I would criticise myself and others would be if we did not make a decision at all. We try to move on and make an impact. President Roosevelt's attitude was to try something and if it did not work then he tried something different. He brought the US out from the Great Depression. I find that politicians are very good at cherry-picking reports. We go with the reports that suit us or with reports that are popular with the public. We need to get away from that and this is why counterfactual impact evaluation, CIE, is so important.

I have some observations on the Pathways to Work programme and the 150,000 people who are unemployed. We talk about men in their 30s and 40s but I believe that a group being ignored is that of those who are in their 50s. This is one of the major faults of the programme. People in that age group still have 15,16 or 17 years of active contribution to society and to their families and they are being ignored by the programme.

On the growth of services, some of the new services being rolled out by Intreo on training, engagement and assisting people back into work and onto proper training paths, are only being targeted at those in receipt of a social welfare benefit. There is a large cohort of men and women who are not in receipt of a social welfare benefit who are excluded from the Pathways to Work programme. They are also excluded from some training and education areas. There are some small programmes opened up and the last Government tried to open up more but with the changing environment, we must look at the impact on society as well as on the economy. There are many men and women in their 40s and 50s, whose partners are working, but who are excluded from the activation measures even though they may be extremely anxious to be involved in JobPath or in accessing Intreo offices.

Employers' engagement is also important. There needs to be a very strong relationship between the Intreo offices and employers. We must ensure that we are providing quality candidates for the jobs that come up and that there is a confidence in the system from employers. With regard to the train-first approach, if one speaks to people who are long-term unemployed, they want to work first and train after. There is a resistance and they ask "What am I training for?" This is because the recession has lasted so long, they may already have been on so many courses and the outcomes were not great because work was not there. On a constant basis I hear people saying they just want to get a job and then they will upskill. In the early 2000s, the pharmaceutical industry made a huge effort in upskilling its workforce with in-house training courses run right across the sector. We need to look at expanding upskilling in the workplace through co-operation with employers. The upskilling may need to be incentivised but as we have seen with Hewlett Packard, technology changes rapidly. A person may once have had four or five careers over the course of their life.

Now that person is likely to have six to ten careers. That upskilling has to take place constantly in the workforce, otherwise the same people, just as they get on the bottom of the ladder, will be knocked off again. It is a cycle of employment, followed by long-term unemployment, followed by short-term employment. In a period in which we are seeing a decrease in unemployment numbers, we need to concentrate on upskilling in the workforce, certainly in areas of low skill and low pay, to allow people to have a career path that allows them to see a future for themselves. I would like to hear Dr. Sweeney's view on that.