Mr. John Murphy:

With regard to the youth guarantee, Senator Cullinane asked what measures would be put in place and whether there would be a clear pathway for young people. This is not something that will be done in isolation from other measures that are being developed by the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Education and Skills. Significant work is being done under the Pathways to Work programme, which operates to complement what we are doing in the Action Plan for Jobs. Reform and restructuring of employment services is taking place through Intreo and a particular objective is to get better linkages between persons on the live register, employers and other opportunities.

The intention of the youth guarantee is that it will build on existing measures, including the full range of activation measures in other schemes, to offer eligible categories of education, training or employment. Significant work is also being done by the Department of Education and Skills in developing SOLAS, the further education and training authority. The legislation for this was passed recently. I am going from this meeting to a meeting between the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and the Minister for Education and Skills, where we will look at the strategy that will be developed for SOLAS and the role we envisage for employers so that they are brought into it. Members may have seen, for example, that when JobsPlus was being launched, it was important that we had employers involved. In the south east we had an interesting example of this. There, a new company developed an important programme, in partnership between the employer and FÁS, to retrain people who had lost their jobs in TalkTalk. This is the kind of programme we want to consider, along with other initiatives, so that when we are building a range of measures under the youth guarantee, we can ensure enterprise is plugged into that and the programme does not just become a course with nothing following on from it.

With regard to state aid and the regional aid maps, coverage is a significant issue. We have managed to retain and slightly increase the proportion of Ireland's population that can be covered under regional aid maps. The percentage covered will increase to approximately 51.4% of the population. This is only a marginal increase, but we had faced a potential reduction at one stage. It is important to avoid a reduction. State aid is a matter that must be considered and it is a matter for Government to decide on it in due course. I have no doubt every region in the country will make its case, including the south east. I think I have covered all the issues raised by the Senator.