Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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The purpose of our meeting is to discuss Europe's youth unemployment crisis. I am delighted on behalf of the committee to welcome Mr. Paddy Cosgrave, who is the founder and organiser of the Dublin Web Summit, which has been described as Europe's largest technology gathering. He also organises Founders, which is an annual gathering of 150 of the world's leading technology company founders.

As we know there is no more urgent issue facing Ireland at the moment than unemployment, particularly youth unemployment. Our rate of youth unemployment is more than 30% and some other EU member states are suffering more - some with rates of up to 50%. This afternoon's meeting with Mr. Cosgrave gives the committee an opportunity to discuss practical steps that might be taken with somebody with a very strong track record in youth entrepreneurship. As somebody working at the coalface of the knowledge economy, Mr. Cosgrave has a particular insight into opportunities in the fast-paced IT and web sectors.

Before I ask Mr. Cosgrave to make his opening remarks, I remind members of a long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that Members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses, or any official by name in such a way as to make him or her readily identifiable. By virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence you are to give this committee. If you are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence in relation to a particular matter and you continue to so do, you are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of your evidence. You are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and you are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, you should not criticise or make charges against any persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. I ask Mr. Cosgrave to make his opening remarks.

Mr. Paddy Cosgrave:

I thank the Chairman and the committee for inviting me here today - it is humbling for a number of reasons which I will outline over the next 30 or 40 minutes. I now employ close to 50 people. We hire, for the most part, highly educated and highly skilled people, some of whom are very recent graduates from this country and the rest are from elsewhere. Through the Dublin Web Summit in October 2012, attended by more than 4,200 people the majority of whom came from abroad, I have had the privilege of meeting and interacting with many of the CEOs of the fastest-growing technology companies in Europe and further afield. I have also worked closely with many of the most active investors in the technology sector, which is only one sector in a much broader economy.

I have thought long and hard about job creation and everything I have learned in recent years. I contrast that experience in business with everything I learned studying economics not far from here, in Trinity College. In the time between completing my studies in economics and today, I have had the privilege of meeting and talking with people who define everything that is good about the country - incredible entrepreneurs, incisive public servants, committed politicians, concerned academics and citizens.

One of those groups stands out in its understanding of how to create a job at a very basic level, that is, business people, entrepreneurs, companies. I know how to create a job. I know the type of people I want. I know how to hire and I know how to train someone into a job, or on the job, but when it comes to creating tens of thousands of jobs, in fact, hundreds of thousands of jobs, not only in Ireland but across Europe, I am not sure my experience in business has taught me anything. The challenges are, perhaps, distinct.

In economics, I learned about macro-level challenges. In business, I have learned about incredibly local-level challenges, that is, the challenges distinct to my sector and, more specifically, to my company. No business person ultimately needs to know how GDP is calculated, why it is used as a measure of economic well-being or why it is relevant. No business person needs to know how Ireland calculates its unemployment statistics or measures of productivity and how the calculation of these measures may diverge from, say, the United States, and the academic debates within economics that rage about these calculations and miscalculations. These facts should not take away from the brilliance of so many Irish business people in creating jobs at a company level, but that is distinct from an economy-wide level.

In truth, I am slightly nervous sitting here today because throughout history it has been business people, confident of the applicability of their anecdotal experience, who have influenced politicians with their ideas, rightly or wrongly, naively or otherwise. Business people like me have funded economic think-tanks and chairs in departments of economics, in this country and elsewhere, to further their ideas, which, in many cases, as a consequence of either their own naivety or otherwise, have proved largely ruinous for most people and beneficial for some.

I do not want to diverge too much from the purpose of this meeting and committee but I want to underline the fact that this has been a consistent feature of most western societies for centuries and something politicians have had to constantly battle with. There is nothing new in what I am saying. Adam Smith wrote openly of this tendency nearly 250 years ago when he published The Wealth of Nationsin 1776. He warned of "the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers", by which he meant their ideas which, he felt, would naturally try to thwart the aspirations of politicians by turning civil government into civil government instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor. There are countless other relevant examples but I will not dwell on them. I am not saying no business person could have a good economic idea, but I am saying that the committee should take what I say with a pinch of salt for historic reasons and because I know a great deal about creating one job, or, at least, a few, but almost nothing about creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in Ireland or millions across Europe.

However, I will say this. The achievements of our education system over the past number of decades are revolutionary. In the space of a few decades, we have gone from the most uneducated country in western Europe to the most educated. The statistics are stark. For example, 19% of the Irish aged 45 to 64 in 2011 attained only a primary school level of education and in the rest of the EU 15, which excludes the United Kingdom but includes the rest of western Europe, the corresponding figure was 1%, that is, which attained only a primary level education. Ireland is now ranked joint first in the European Union for third level attainment among those aged 25 to 34, according to the latest survey from the Central Statistics Office. Germany, for instance, is actually far below.

It is with this reverence that we now have for education in this country that I will make my only suggestion at this point, and then I look forward to further discussion. Exchequer or European funding for any policy should be allocated on the basis of evidence. In the absence of any evidence, positive or negative, the policy should be rigorously tested, ideally, initially at a very small level. When it comes to the provision of health care, doctors implement solutions on the basis of evidence. What matters is a proven outcome. Quack doctors, shamans and soothsayers rely on solutions that may sound good; real doctors rely on solutions that are based on evidence. State funding in this country is not always allocated on the basis of evidence; in others, it is. In this instance, my only suggestion is that it should be.

Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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I thank Mr. Cosgrave. Before we take questions from the floor, it was remiss of me earlier not to welcome the newest member of the committee, Deputy Eric Byrne. Following a review of the internal membership from the Labour Party, it has been decided that Deputy Byrne will take the seat that was previously held by Deputy Keaveney. I welcome Deputy Byrne. We look forward to his input into the committee over the coming weeks and months.

Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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I thank the Chairman. I am very happy to be here sharing this committee with a number of other members of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade. As it is my first meeting, I will be very quiet.

Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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The first question for Mr. Cosgrave is from Senator Healy Eames.

Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)
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I wish a happy new year to the Chairman and fellow members.

Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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Many happy returns.

Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)
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It is a pleasure to meet and hear from Mr. Cosgrave. I am aware that he had a role in the setting up of the undergraduate awards programme. I congratulate him on that. It had not received much publicity for a good while and now many more know about it but I had heard about it.

Mr. Cosgrave stated he knew how to create a job. I was particularly struck by that. He might tell us a little about it. He stated he has 50 employed. He seemed to not make a big deal out of it. If every employer or entrepreneur out there could have 50 employed, it would be a very big deal. He seemed to be alluding to something else, that creating many jobs is an even bigger deal, and we all agree. Besides his one piece of advice that Exchequer funding should be directed towards where there is evidence, which of course is sound, to what else is he alluding there? Is he talking about the IT systems?

Mr. Paddy Cosgrave:

I think-----

Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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If Mr. Cosgrave does not mind, we will address everything through the Chair. I thank Senator Healy Eames for her comments. I will take another couple of questions first and then ask Mr. Cosgrave to respond.

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome Mr. Cosgrave, thank him for his presentation and look forward to interacting with him a little more. As a follow-on, successive Governments have struggled with long-term unemployment, youth employment and various other aspects of employment. Often the response has been - I am not being party political here as it is a response that has come from successive governments - that governments are not in the business of creating jobs; they are in the business of creating the environment in which jobs are created. Mr. Cosgrave would seem to bring that forward in his point that one must encourage business people.

Could Mr. Cosgrave talk to us about State funding for education, retraining, community employment schemes and the various different schemes, such as JobBridge? Has he any views on that in terms of the pot of funding? Is there anything that, from his experience in industry, he believes could be utilised better? It is good in that we tend to see it, from a political point of view, as an activation programme. It keeps people occupied until such time as conditions improve and when there is a greater availability of jobs. Should we be trying to do more than only labour activation?

Without getting into specific courses, we all are familiar with those courses that, when one looks at them in the cold light of day, one might question as to whether they had any long-term potential for the individuals other than to retain that activation, give people a sense of worth and keep them active during the period of unemployment. I would appreciate Mr. Cosgrave's comments on that.

Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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I am fascinated by the statistics that Mr. Cosgrave has given us about the levels of education, that Ireland is joint first in achieving third level education. Ireland's level probably stands at 80%, which is very high, and we should all applaud the successive governments that created this environment.

Having said that, and having listened to Mr. Cosgrave's contribution, which I may not have fully understood, why, with such a highly-educated workforce, do we have such a high level of unemployment? If the old slogan, whether Marxist or Leninist, of "educate to be free" is still valid, how does he recommend we look at those who have not attained, in other words, the 20% who have not attained the high levels of third level education? Do we have a mixed bag there and do we need different policies?

I will conclude by asking Mr. Cosgrave to expand on the question of EU and Exchequer funding being specifically targeted in an evidence-based formula. What exactly does that mean?

Mr. Paddy Cosgrave:

I will begin by dealing with the points raised by Deputy Dooley on youth unemployment, which is a huge challenge throughout Europe and not just in Ireland; the use of funding for job creation; and skill levels in Ireland and educational attainment in general. An interesting report released in the past 12 months by EUROSTAT, which is the CSO of Europe, is on the sectors chosen for study by undergraduates in Ireland, which is one cohort of the population. One of the sectors dominated by Ireland is maths, computing and engineering in which it has the highest rate in Europe. With regard to training people for the areas with the greatest demand, Ireland is doing incredibly well. Much of the rhetoric and many of the opinions published in newspapers are somewhat misleading with regard to the dedication of the education system in Ireland to addressing huge skills deficiencies.

I wish to speak about the role of the Government in job creation. There has been a tendency in the past 40 years in economics in general to increasingly sideline the role of the State in job creation and creating companies. For some reason people tend to forget an enormous amount of economic history, in particular with regard to most of the world's advanced industrial nations. The United States is a pertinent example, and is a country people look towards as one which has almost entirely embraced free markets with a minimal role for the State in the creation of jobs and companies. This is largely inaccurate in the face of evidence.

If one takes snapshots over time one will find the role of the State has been incredibly significant in supporting, nurturing and creating many of the most competitive elements of the US economy globally. This refers to their largest export industries. Aviation is a huge driver of US exports, mainly through companies such as Boeing. In the mid-1960s, many years after the Second World War, the level of research and development funding to the aviation industry in the United States was more than 90%. In the United States the electronics industry, which was a key driver of exports, was also funded almost entirely by State funding with more than 60% of research and development funded through the National Science Foundation; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA; the Pentagon and elsewhere. On comparing this to other advanced industrial nations such as Japan, South Korea and Sweden one will find very similar patterns, whereby the state played a huge role in underwriting the costs incurred by companies in research and development, which allowed companies to build new products and find new markets throughout the world and in turn they grew their revenues and employed more people.

For many years some countries in the western world exported a version of economics to the less-developed world which encouraged those countries not to invest in their own companies but instead to export raw materials. It was a policy Great Britain foisted on this country for hundreds of years. The potato famine is a stark example of a government not nurturing or stepping in and helping indigenous industry to create jobs and create demand in this country. There was sufficient grain to feed a large portion of the starving population but it was exported to England because there was a better market for it there which meant the indigenous population starved or had to leave the country.

To return to the point on job creation, we need to examine very carefully how governments in other countries have created jobs in key industries and the huge role governments have played, in particular through state agencies. The United States has the Export-Import Bank which helps provide loans to foreign companies which wish to purchase US products, be they aeroplanes or weapons systems.

Ireland does an incredible job of nurturing small businesses through a number of State agencies. Enterprise Ireland in particular must be commended for its ability to work with businesses with between ten and 50 employees. One of the biggest challenges for Ireland is to work with companies in the middle, which are not very small or very big. We have incredible big companies such as Glanbia, Kerry group and CRH and incredible small companies, but in between compared to many other European countries one will find a dearth of medium-sized export-focused companies. The role our agencies are given in helping to create markets and build relationships on behalf of these companies throughout the world is much smaller compared to a number of other countries with a much greater history of international trade than ours. We are catching up very quickly and I commend Enterprise Ireland in this regard.

Deputy Byrne asked if there are so many educated people why is there is so much unemployment and this is a relevant point. With all of these issues there will always be a supply and demand challenge. It is great to train people to have skills which are, in theory, needed but if the demand is not there for them to be employed they can have all the skills in the world but they will lie idle, hopefully for a short time but in many cases for a much longer time. One of the greatest challenges not only for Ireland but for a number of European countries is in stimulating and creating this demand, which seems to be a huge challenge. There is a huge philosophical divide in economics on whether we should take money out of the economy and stop spending or spend money and put money into the economy and create demand. There are huge structural challenges at European level and in the United States, in that when money is printed through quantitative easing and given to banks it does not seem to seep down into the hands of businesses; much of it appears to be used for speculative purposes which does not help with creating real demand.

With regard to how to deal with people who do not have a third level degree, it is a highly relevant point. I grew up on a farm and nobody I worked with there had a third level degree. I do not think it is necessary in many cases for a range of jobs. Many vocations and trades require different sets of skills, but unemployment is more acute now in these areas. Construction was a huge driver of the economy but it has collapsed. I do not have any quick answers.

Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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Will Mr. Cosgrave elaborate on the question of targeting of EU and Exchequer funding? He used the word "evidence" and I ask him what evidence we should examine before funding is channelled.

Mr. Paddy Cosgrave:

In the United States under the previous President, George W. Bush, while many Europeans may not have agreed with all of his policies he introduced into federal law a stipulation that any federal funding for education or health would be provided only on the basis of evidence.

It meant that the state of Tennessee could apply for new blackboards or electronic whiteboards but, unless evidence could be provided that spending $400 million on the acquisition of smart whiteboards would benefit children in terms of their educational attainment then, as far as the federal government was concerned, it was simply giving money to a company because it sounded good. That is all that it means. One cannot have evidence for every case. Contentious ethical issues arise all the time, such as the provision of health care for women and children. It is not always immediately clear but, in many cases, there is a large amount of research available. It is all well and good to listen to the anecdotal ideas of a businessperson but there are perfect examples of far better ideas that have been tested and are known to work.

Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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I wish to revert to the question posed by Senator Healy Eames. She quoted Mr. Cosgrave as saying that he knew how to create jobs. What advice would he give to people who want to create jobs?

Mr. Paddy Cosgrave:

My advice is sector-specific. The way I grew my business was different from the way my dad worked his farm. It is like comparing chalk and cheese. I wish it was a case of one solution fits all.

Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)
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Can Mr. Cosgrave be sector-specific? He mentioned education, but a very high percentage of this race are educated. He then said that we must create a demand, but entrepreneurs know how to create jobs. How did he create jobs in his sector?

Mr. Paddy Cosgrave:

With regard to my own sector, there is evidence from the Kaufmann institute and others, that new net job creation tends to be created by smaller companies rather than larger ones. If one has an allocation of €100 million then one must ask if it is better to give that sum to one huge company or is it better to give it to 1,000 companies to create ten jobs each. Evidence suggests that investing in smaller to medium sized companies tends, over the medium term, to lead to more net new job creation. There are many reasons for it. For example, it would be unprecedented for a company like the Kerry Group to triple its number of employees in a year. It is not unprecedented for a small company of ten employees, having stumbled upon a great product, to triple in size to 40 employees in a year. That happens all of the time and there are many reasons for it.

Colm Burke (Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Cosgrave for his presentation.

I have spoken to a number of business people about jobs. I spoke to Seán O'Sullivan from the television programme "Dragons' Den" and he expressed a strong view that many job vacancies here cannot be filled because we do not have people with the required qualifications. Last Monday I spoke to a person who employs 425 people. He told me that he offered a job to someone recently but the person refused it because he or she was better off remaining on social welfare rather than take a job with a starting salary of €30,000.

We have a good third level education system but it does not respond fast enough to market demand. Let us take the simple area of law in which I am involved. Every year Ireland produces a large number of law graduates but there are no jobs for them and the university sector has not responded accordingly. What changes would Mr. Cosgrave make to get third level institutions to respond faster to market demands? Ireland seems to be way behind when it comes to responding to market demands.

Another problem is that employers no longer compete. For example, from 1998 to 2004 my business had to compete with another legal practice down the road in order to retain employees. Now many employers must compete with the social welfare system when they want to fill a vacancy. How would Mr. Cosgrave deal with the issue?

Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Mr. Cosgrave. I apologise for being late and for my question in case he answered it in his presentation. He mentioned that not everyone avails of third level education and I agree that not everyone does. Can he comment on the education system and where he would like it to be? He made positive comments about maths and science. What is his view of modern European languages? Do they relate to the tech world? Do they create an opportunity to travel and avail of job opportunities in the European Union?

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Mr. Cosgrave and thank him for his remarks. People like him are an inspiration to the new generation, particularly at this difficult time.

Mr. Cosgrave sold himself short when he said that he can only identify where to create a relatively small number of jobs but thousands of jobs is a different issue. It is not. It is simply extending the same format, identifying the marketplace, discovering where vacancies exist and identifying the educational qualifications required.

We are short on statistics here. I am a great believer in examining statistics and figuring out a response. People have expressed their despair at the high levels of unemployment which was a natural corollary to the downturn in the European economies. There was no other way around it and it had to happen. An upturn will be equally dramatic. It is critical that we identify where and when an upturn will take place and how best to capitalise on it.

Let us examine the European statistics on youth unemployment which state that the chances for a young unemployed person of finding a job are low - only 29.7% of those aged between 15 and 24 years who were unemployed in 2010 found a job in 2011. That was too soon to expect an improvement. It was not possible to benefit from economic recovery in such a short period. It is not a magic formula. We must find the depth, establish the foundation and start building again. That applies to Ireland and right across Europe. When young people do find work their jobs tend to be less stable. In 2012, 42% of young employees worked on temporary contracts; this is four times greater than the equivalent figure for older employees. That is true. I do not want to make a political statement but some of the training schemes introduced by the Government led to surprising results. Quite a number of the participants found permanent jobs. The participants benefited from a bit of experience, thus creating confidence in their ability to find their feet in the marketplace. More of that is required.

Another interesting statistic is that early school leavers are a high-risk group with 54.2% not being employed while within this group about 70% want to work. Therefore, 30% of them do not want to work and must be motivated. That is the point that Senator Colm Burke raised. We must deal with a sizeable number of the young population on this basis.

It is important that we inspire the younger generation and generate interest in different areas of work. If they lack inspiration, there is a serious void in what we are doing and we need to address the issue forensically in a more scientific way than we have done heretofore.

I think employment comes down to a combination of education and training. The two must be combined. We need to identify where job vacancies are likely to occur. We can identify the areas in which jobs were lost in the past five years. We see recovery in the manufacturing and services sectors, the IT and pharmaceutical sectors and in the export-generated sectors. There will also be recovery in the construction sector in the not too distant future. In spite of what people say, our population has not gone away. The population has risen, which is totally the opposite of what happened in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s. We must prepare to capitalise on the rise in population and our people must have the necessary skills to be able to access the employment generated.

Deputy Timmy Dooley is correct in his assessment of the Government's role in job creation. There are two ways to get involved. One must create the economic environment. However, let me sound a word of warning. We were in similar economic situations in the 1970s and 1980s. Unfortunately, the economists took several different directions. I do not want to cast aspersions on economists, but when the economy has stalled and the current budget cannot be balanced, we are not in a position to spend more money as we would be increasing our indebtedness. We tried this in the 1970s and the 1980s and it did not work. We have an open economy and we must be very careful how we proceed. The Government should invest in education and skills improvement as a preliminary measure.

Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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Mr. Cosgrave mentioned that we have excellent State organisations doing great work. I met officials from the IDA yesterday and they have had a particularly successful year in attracting foreign direct investment. I am aware of new investments in County Louth from PayPal and YapStone. At the annual gathering of the 150 tech founders, Mr. Cosgrave must come across a great many people who are interested in relocating and perhaps locating in Ireland. Could the IDA do anything to entice higher levels of investment or can the chambers of commerce do anything to attract foreign direct investment in Ireland?

The Government is progressing the idea of the youth guarantee during our Presidency term. Does Mr. Cosgrave have any thoughts on how this might work in practice and how effective it might be in ensuring we keep young people from the trap of long-term unemployment?

Mr. Cosgrave mentioned the benefits of investing in small companies and start-up ventures. Does he have an opinion on a specific youth entrepreneurship fund solely for young people who are interested in starting their own companies?

Mr. Paddy Cosgrave:

I thank members for their very challenging questions and interesting contributions. Senator Colm Burke raised the issue of American companies that are finding it difficult to hire individuals with the requisite skills. There are two ways to look at this. The first is to look at the percentage of the workforce in Ireland employed in the high-tech sector and compare this with the equivalent percentage in other nations in the western world. In this way we can establish whether there is a deficiency in the workforce; in other words, we can establish whether we are behind other nations, in the middle, or at the front. EUROSTAT published a report just over a year ago on the percentage of the workforce in Ireland and the rest of Europe employed in the high-tech sector. It turns out that Ireland has more people employed in the high-tech sector as a percentage of the workforce than any other country in Europe. In fact it is twice the rate of our nearest neighbour, the United Kingdom, and twice that of our next nearest neighbour, France. That is quite a startling statistic. Second, with regard to the current cohort of young people who are being trained, do we have a sufficient number of students studying these key areas compared to other western nations? There will always be a deficit of highly skilled labour at the cutting edge of the economy. Germany in 1880 or 1890 faced the same challenges. This will inevitably occur because of the feedback loop between new emerging technologies and the reaction of educational establishments in providing the necessary skills. Nevertheless, if one looks at the number of students studying computing, computing maths and engineering, one can see that Ireland is at the very forefront of Europe, with 14.5% of students studying those subjects. The only country that is marginally above this is Germany, where just over 14.5% of students are studying these subjects. Germany has a long tradition of engineering and we are right up there with Germany. The only other country with marginally more students being trained in these core areas is Malta, which must be discounted because of its size. Ireland is doing incredibly well.

I am well aware of the anecdote mentioned by the Senator. The only issue is that the level of money the individual was prepared to pay was far below the market rates. If he or she was prepared to pay the market rates, there would be no issue in finding the talent. The talent exists in Ireland, as a percentage of the population, to a greater extent than anywhere else in Europe, and the statistics back that up. Nevertheless, there is a deficiency in terms of the number of people available. Every businessperson would love to employ people as cheaply as possible, but the fact of the matter is that this is one of the most in-demand sectors.

The Senator mentioned an example of a recent graduate refusing a job on the basis that the salary was only €30,000 and it was better for him or her to remain on social welfare. One can do a literature review of all of the studies on whether there is a link between generous social welfare systems and disincentives to seek employment. In fact, despite the perpetuation of some sort of economic myth in certain circles, one will find there is no link. Incredibly generous welfare systems do not necessarily have much higher rates of unemployment. The studies show that the tendency of a person to seek work under a generous welfare system is not necessarily less than under an incredibly punitive welfare system. Thirty years of studies have shown that no such link exists.

With regard to law graduates, a perpetual challenge faced by the professions is the delay in matching supply with demand in areas such as civil engineering, architecture and law, to take three examples. At the age of 18 a young person is advised that he should study in one of these areas, but by the time he reaches the point of qualification the demand is no longer at that level. This is the ribbon effect. When this occurred in Germany in the 1880s and 1890s, the government put in place a mechanism to stop oversupply in the professions. That has existed in Germany for about 120 years, but it does not exist in Ireland. Germany is a good example of how a government can control the supply of graduates in key areas such as law, architecture and engineering.

Deputy Kyne queried my views on the Irish education system and the teaching of languages.

The Irish education system is an incredible achievement considering where it has come from. If one looks at the figures for the level of educational attainment for 2010, 25% of the population aged between 44 and 65 had attained a third level degree. In the rest of the EU 15 it is 66%. It is important to look at where we have come in such a short space of time in terms of the quantity of people passing through the education system. That does not necessarily count for everything but there is a significant correlation between the level of educational attainment, income and other measures. There may be some quality issues that are highlighted by studies such as PISA which show that our rankings in terms of quality in maths and sciences is not at the very top but that is something on which we must get to work. The Department of Education and Skills and others have examined the matter closely and many reforms are under way.

In terms of languages and the ability to travel, I can only speak from my experience, and English seems to be universally spoken, certainly in northern Europe in business. It is great to be able to speak German or French as it makes one more valuable. Irish is incredibly important in terms of our identity and what it means to be Irish and the teaching of it in schools is crucial. The huge volume of time that is dedicated to it is a contentious issue. We spend perhaps a seventh of our time learning a language that helps us form an identity but does not help us get a job during incredibly difficult times.

Deputy Durkan referred to motivation to seek jobs. From anecdotal experience and the academic literature on the subject, most young people I have met would like to have a job because it gives a sense of identity. It is something in which they take great pride. Decades of study indicate that the more generous welfare systems do not necessarily increase the level of disincentive for people to seek jobs. I welcome the fact that people get permanent jobs following internships on programmes such as JobBridge.

When I got to know the IDA initially I was influenced by the naughty things people from outside the IDA told me. Then I had the privilege of meeting members of UK Trade and Investment, UKTI, which is the IDA's equivalent in London. I had a number of meetings in Downing Street with UKTI and Mr. Cameron's senior trade advisers. I did the same in Denmark, France and elsewhere. Having met with similar agencies to the IDA and having seen them at work I do not think there is any agency in the world comparable to the IDA. Compared to other agencies in the world what it does is incredible. That is backed up by studies by the World Bank and others in terms of its pure metrics in getting people on the ground in Ireland.

The Chairman asked what the IDA is doing and what other chambers could do to encourage people to open up offices here. It is important to look at World Bank surveys. One of the most important aspects of trying to get a business to locate to a new country is to get people on the ground. Irish people are blessed with an ability to talk, socialise and engage with people in a welcoming and warm way. We have experience of bringing so many founders of high-growth tech companies that never thought of locating in Dublin to come here. The two days they spend in the city learning about it and experiencing Irish culture makes such a profound impact on people. It is all well and good to advertise on Bloomberg and in Businessweekor Forbesbut the impact of getting a CEO or key decision maker on the ground is profound. Everyone knows that. No one is under any illusions. The more of that the IDA does, the more I would encourage it. I am not such a big fan of just advertising in publications.

I have come across the youth guarantee. It must be welcomed in principle. If it could be pulled off Europe-wide it would be incredible, although I imagine it is incredibly complicated, even more so because there are such constraints on funding. There is a European micro-fund for young people. In many European countries for whatever reason people are not aware of such micro-funds. It does not take €1 million to invest in an idea and two guys; sometimes, as little as €5,000 or €10,000 can get people started. It is not necessary to invest huge amounts. In my sector, which is technology, it does not take much money to get an idea off the ground, get it tested and find out if people want to buy into it, but that is just my sector.

Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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On behalf of the committee I thank Mr. Cosgrave for attending today’s meeting and for the interesting presentation and discussion. It has been a most informative meeting. We wish him well in his future work.