Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I wish to draw the attention of witnesses to the fact that, by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to this committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence.

Witnesses are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given. They are asked to respect the parliamentary practice that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

I advise witnesses that the opening statements they have submitted to the committee will be published on the committee's website after this meeting. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against any person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

This meeting is devoted to the important issue of the youth guarantee. The committee considered this matter earlier in the year, on foot of which we decided to submit a political contribution to the European Commission. Since then, as agreed by this committee, work on this matter has been undertaken by Senator O'Donnell who, following today's meeting, will endeavour to draw up recommendations for the committee regarding the implementation of the guarantee.

The youth guarantee is an EU initiative that was agreed by member states earlier this year. Once implemented from 2014, it will assure young people aged 18 to 25 a good quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship of work experience within four months of becoming unemployed. The Department of Social Protection is developing an action plan to implement the guarantee in Ireland from next year.

I welcome the witnesses: Mr. John McKeon, assistant secretary, and Mr. Terry Corcoran, principal officer, from the Department of Social Protection; Ms Nuala Whelan, Ballymun Job Centre; Mr. James Doorley, National Youth Council of Ireland; Ms Cora Horgan, Tipperary Regional Youth Service; Mr. Joe O'Connor, Union of Students in Ireland; and Ms Fiona Dunne, Irish Congress of Trade Unions. I invite Mr. McKeon from the Department of Social Protection to make his opening statement.

Mr. John McKeon:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before it to discuss the youth guarantee. I am joined by my colleague Mr. Terry Corcoran, principal officer, who was a member of the delegation representing Ireland in the negotiations of the European Council recommendation on a youth guarantee.

Between 2008 and 2012 employment levels in Ireland fell by about 340,000, or 16%, from just under 2.2 million to just over 1.8 million. This lead to an increase in unemployment levels of over 220,000, from 107,000 to a peak of 328,000, a threefold increase. According to figures from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, the overall unemployment rate increased from 4.6% to approximately 15%. In relative terms, the reduction in youth employment levels was more pronounced than for the working-age population generally. The number of people aged 15 to 24 years in employment fell by nearly 60%, accounting for over 210,000 of the overall reduction set out above, with just 147,000 young people in employment at the start of 2013. However, in relative terms, the increase in youth unemployment levels was not as pronounced as for the population generally. Youth unemployment increased by approximately 45,000 from about 38,000 to a peak of about 83,000. The rate peaked at 33%.

There are several reasons why the reduction in employment did not translate directly into a commensurate increase in youth unemployment. First, the reduction in the birth rate during the 1980s and 1990s meant there was a net reduction of 30,000 in the number of young people entering the labour market. Second, the reversal in migration trends since 2010 has further reduced the number of young people entering the labour market by approximately 16,000 over the period. Finally, more young people are staying on in education, reducing the labour force participation rate of young people from about 53% to about 45%. The combination of these factors saw the number of young people participating in the labour market fall by about 110,000 between 2008 and 2012.

Recent data on youth employment and unemployment levels are more positive. Youth employment appears to have stabilised in the first half of 2013 at about 153,000, while the level of youth unemployment has fallen from its peak of 83,000 to 65,000, equivalent to a youth unemployment rate of 29%. It is hoped this improvement in employment of young people will continue. Past experience in Ireland and abroad indicates that youth employment, which tends to fall relatively rapidly in a downturn, can be expected to increase relatively rapidly during a period of economic recovery.

The Government’s strategy to tackle unemployment, including youth unemployment, comprises two main elements. First, it aims to create an environment for a strong economic recovery by promoting competitiveness and productivity, as well as encouraging entrepreneurial activity. This is the focus of the Action Plan for Jobs as developed and managed by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. The plan’s objective is to stimulate the demand for labour by encouraging and supporting entrepreneurial activity, along with investment in the economy, with the target of adding a net 100,000 jobs into it by 2016.

Second, it aims to provide services to support and assist unemployed people in returning to paid employment. This is the focus of the Pathways to Work approach, which is concerned with ensuring that as many as possible new jobs and other vacancies in the economy are filled by candidates taken from the live register. Under the scheme the Government is implementing several programmes to assist unemployed people in remaining close to the labour market. Examples of such initiatives, all of which are available to young unemployed people, include the Intreo service, JobBridge, JobsPlus and Momentum.

Although it is always difficult to establish a causal relationship between intervention and outcome in the labour market environment, we are encouraged to see that the most recent statistics for the second quarter of this year from the CSO quarterly national household survey show positive trends in the labour market, both overall and for young people. More recent live register trends suggest this positive trend is continuing.

However, the level of improvement is small relative to the underlying scale of the problem, and the pace of progress is not uniform across the European Union. Even where there is progress, it is too early to declare the recent trends will continue to develop or accelerate. Accordingly, youth unemployment continues to present a major challenge for Ireland, as it does for all EU member states. Throughout the EU area, it is estimated 5.5 million young people aged 25 and under are not in employment, education or training – the so-called NEETs. In the Union overall, the rate of youth unemployment is still growing and in some countries is close to 60%. It is even higher in Greece.

Recognising the urgent requirement to tackle the challenge of youth joblessness, the European Council agreed on a recommendation for a youth guarantee in June 2013. It states member states should "ensure that all young people under the age of 25 years receive a good-quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education." In agreeing this recommendation, the Council accepted that the guarantee would need to be implemented over time on a phased basis in those countries facing significant fiscal constraints, such as Ireland. Also, in support of the recommendation for a youth guarantee, the Council agreed that a total of €6 billion would be earmarked in EU funds to support approved youth guarantee projects over the course of the seven-year multi-annual financial framework. This €6 billion comprises €3 billion from within the existing European Social Fund and an additional €3 billion in the form of youth employment initiative funding. The Council also agreed this funding should be front-loaded to support projects implemented during the first two years of the framework, namely, 2014 and 2015. It will be reserved for use in those regions where youth unemployment levels exceeded 25% during the reference year of 2012. Both regions in Ireland satisfy this 25% threshold. To access these funds, member states have been asked to submit a youth guarantee implementation plan to the European Commission by the end of 2013. To develop and implement such a plan in Ireland, the Department of Social Protection has set up an interdepartmental youth guarantee implementation group with officials and programme managers from the Department of Education and Skills, the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. The terms of reference for this group are to review the current range of youth employment services in Ireland, to assess what measures are appropriate to deliver the youth guarantee in Ireland and to develop an implementation plan for the Government's approval and transmission to the EU before the end of the year.

As an input to this plan, the Department of Social Protection held a stakeholders’ consultation forum on the guarantee on October 14 and has invited further submissions from the bodies that attended. It is intended that feedback from the forum will feed into the final design of the implementation plan. In addition, the Department has retained the OECD to provide input and advice on the framing of the plan. The OECD is also providing assistance to several other countries. In particular, it has been asked to identify best international practice and how it might best be applied to the implementation of the youth guarantee in Ireland. A delegation from the OECD has already met with stakeholders at the aforementioned forum, as well as with a range of relevant public bodies. It is due to produce a report with recommendations for the Department by the end of November, the findings of which will feed into the final design of the implementation plan.

The development of the plan will also draw on expert work already carried out by the European Commission over the past few years, as well as the output from the specially convened Heads of State meeting held in Berlin in July. In summary, the work of the Commission, as reflected in the conclusions from the Heads of State meeting, suggests several elements for inclusion in any youth guarantee, including the development of a vocational dual-training model, as used in Germany and Austria; the support and promotion of internships; the promotion of intra-EU labour mobility; the targeted use of employment subsidies; the development of youth entrepreneurship supports, including micro-finance; the review and redesign of business processes in public employment services, PES; and the development of closer links between PES, training agencies and employers.

Ireland already has a number of services, schemes and initiatives that address each of these elements, including JobsPlus, JobBridge, Intreo and MOMENTUM. A key part of the challenge, therefore, will be to increase the impact of these schemes in supporting young unemployed people.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I am conscious that we are ten minutes into Mr. McKeon's presentation. Is it possible for him to summarise the rest of it?

Mr. John McKeon:

I certainly can. Notwithstanding that the plan has yet to be finalised, it likely that we will modify the Intreo process, increase the number of places on schemes available to young people, earmark a quota of places or opportunities on existing schemes for young people, vary the eligibility criteria in favour of young people and expand the number of opportunities currently available to them. That is reflected in the initial steps we are taking in budget 2014 to introduce a variant of JobsPlus targeted specifically at young people, to provide for an additional intake of 1,500 young people on to the very successful JobBridge scheme, to earmark places on the Tús scheme, to develop a pilot programme to support young unemployed people in taking up work opportunities and training schemes such as Your First EURES Job, to ring-fence training places for under-25s and to make funds available to young entrepreneurs via Microfinance Ireland. In total, the provision across these headings in the 2014 budget comes to about €46 million.

We have also started work on the Ballymun pilot, which the committee will hear about from one of the other contributors. We have EU funding of €250,000 for that. The focus of that scheme is working with young people in Ballymun on career assistance and guidance and with employers to then place them in employment. The project will begin its first referrals at the end of this month. Hopefully, we will get some people through the pilot next year. The intention is that all young people on the live register in Ballymun will benefit from the pilot.

I hope that I have adequately set out the context of the youth guarantee and given an indication of the approach that is being taken to develop the plan. We will be pleased to take whatever questions the committee might have.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I thank Mr. McKeon for summarising the last part of his presentation, which everybody should have. I now invite Ms Nuala Whelan to make her opening remarks on behalf of Ballymun Job Centre.

Ms Nuala Whelan:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to give the views of Ballymun Job Centre. Ballymun Job Centre is a community-based organisation providing employment services to local people since 1986. We were established as a community response to the high levels of unemployment at the time. We are a voluntary charitable organisation and manage the local employment services in the Ballymun area. Over our lifetime, we have built relationships and worked at local, national and European levels. We believe the people of Ballymun have the capacity to realise their labour market potential. We want to raise their skills and labour market aspirations and give people choice in terms of the labour market.

It is within this context that Ballymun Job Centre brings its expertise to the Ballymun pilot, as Mr. McKeon mentioned. We see this pilot as an important milestone for the future direction of a national policy on youth unemployment. The lessons from the pilot will, we hope, inform the activation of young people aged between 18 and 24. Ballymun Job Centre is involved in developing the pilot at local level. I will discuss two areas in respect of the expertise we bring to this pilot.

The first is the EQUAL Youth inter-agency network, which was established in 2008 and provides an inter-agency approach to the progression of young people towards the labour market. We are the lead organisation in this inter-agency model and have formal monthly meetings in which our caseload of young people are tracked and progressed. It provides a continuum of seamless service to the young people from guidance through to the workplace.

Our second area of expertise is quality-driven career guidance. We believe this is a cornerstone of any youth activation model. We have experience from a number of projects in which we have developed an in-depth career guidance model, a quality framework on the delivery of guidance to disadvantaged jobseekers and a range of career guidance assessment tools that are online and that we use with our clients. The guidance process involves a very in-depth assessment of the individual's needs and a tailored guidance approach identifying their aptitudes and behavioural style in the workplace. This feeds into the development of a comprehensive career plan that both has a longer-term career objective and short-term career goals. The implementation of this plan is conducted in a very supportive and positive way with the career guidance practitioner within our service. Elements of this model can be implemented either in a group setting or on an individual basis. The outcome of this guidance process is very important for the work we do. We try to help people increase their self-awareness, improve their self-esteem, build career self-efficacy and help them become more resilient in the labour market, therefore providing more long-term sustainable outcomes for young people. We aim to build on both the human and psychological capital of our clients, but the implementation of this type of career plan very much relies on the practitioner-client relationship. It is highly dependent on the skills and approaches of the guidance practitioner within the context of this inter-agency model. It relies on the continuum of this support through education and training and into the labour market.

I have outlined a number of reasons guidance is important. One reason is that it prevents uninformed career decisions. Rather than allowing a client to make a decision to access a training course based simply on its availability in the local area, it provides the client with a more comprehensive way of making decisions about his or her career.

We recognise that there are multiple challenges within the youth guarantee model. It is important to recognise that many people have multiple barriers to employment and some people have very few barriers to employment, so the model needs to be flexible and different levels of support may be required depending on the individual. In Ballymun, we focus on inter-generational and community impact, which results in clustering of very disadvantaged people in certain areas. Therefore, the flexibility of the model is paramount. We want to focus on short-term interventions as well as longer-term robust methods so that people sustain their abilities within the labour market.

In terms of recommendations, we see career guidance as being the first step in any training, education or activation process. It keeps people close to the labour market just by engaging with services and it should form a bridge linking the identified labour market needs of the individual to the programmes that are designed to meet those individual's needs. However, successful implementation of a quality-driven youth guarantee model is largely dependent on the skills and approach of the guidance practitioners delivering that service and the resources put into it.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I thank Ms Whelan. I will now turn to the National Youth Council of Ireland, then Tipperary Regional Youth Service and finally to the Union of Students in Ireland and ICTU. I invite Mr. James Doorley to make his opening remarks on behalf of the National Youth Council of Ireland.

Mr. James Doorley:

I thank members for the invitation to speak today. The National Youth Council of Ireland is a representative body for about 45 national voluntary youth organisations across the country. We certainly welcome the opportunity to speak about the youth guarantee. We have been working on youth unemployment for a number of years, and as far back as March 2011 we called for an examination of a youth guarantee in Ireland. The Department has already outlined the context and background so I will not talk about the "why". I think we all agree on the need for a youth guarantee. I want to talk about the "how" - how can we make this happen and how we can make it work. We would acknowledge that it will be challenging to deliver a guaranteed place for every young person who has been unemployed or out of the education system for four months or more, but we think it can be done. I would like to present some of what we consider to be the key components of the youth guarantee, many of which have been mentioned by Mr. McKeon and Ms Whelan. I will go through them very quickly.

Perhaps it sounds like common sense, but the concept of a guarantee does have a certain currency in our language. Given that young people are facing a very difficult labour market and many challenges and frustrations, if we go out there and sell them the idea of a guarantee, we must also meet our side of the bargain. We think it can be done, but we must be very careful not to over-promise and under-deliver because that would be a further frustration for them. We should strive as a country to implement the best youth guarantee in Europe because it is something that will affect the entire European Union. We must also be realistic and say that if we are going to deliver a quality youth guarantee, we must make the investment. There is no point in saying it can be done on the cheap. The reality is that it cannot. I acknowledge that Ireland is not Sweden and the context is very different, but under the Swedish model, based on the number of young people unemployed for six months or longer, it would cost approximately €273 per annum.

We welcome the allocation of €14 million in the budget but that has to be only an initial allocation. Funding is also available from the European Union. The Department will be more familiar with the details but we understand the Irish Government can get back up to 66% if it puts the money up front. We need to put young jobseekers at the centre of the decision-making process because it is their futures we are discussing. We hear a lot about passive activation and schemes. We want to support young people in getting engaged with their career choices, but they have to be active participants. Our work with young people shows they are concerned about the key career choices that are being made. In many cases, they see their engagement with the Department and the various services as an interview. It is an opportunity for them to make key career choices. We would like to see a "reasons why" document for any decisions made on a choice so that the participant can ask whether a course will allow him or her to progress along a career path. Young people are realistic and they understand they are in a difficult labour market, but they also want to know they are going somewhere.

We definitely need to offer a diversity of options for young jobseekers because they are not a homogenous group. We have young people with significant qualifications but who lack work experience and others who left school at the age of 13 or 14 years and have been out of the education system. Their needs are very different. The youth guarantee offers an opportunity to prepare a diversity of options. The EUROFOUND document published last year thoroughly examined this issue and demonstrated that the youth guarantee can only work if a diversity of options are available. The Department has pointed to the need to provide enterprise and self-employment options as well as a range of training and educational supports. I attended a meeting in Cavan at which a young man in his early 20s asked how the youth guarantee would help him as an entrepreneur.

All of us, including the Department, face a challenge in deciding where to start. There are 63,000 young people on the live register, of whom approximately 28,000 have been on it for one year or longer. The question arises of whether we start there, with young people who have been on the live register for longer, or with those who are most disadvantaged. Our view is that we should start with the young people who most need our support because we are concerned about that group being left behind. In the context of the good news that the labour market may be picking up, those young people will not get jobs unless they get support now. It is welcome that we are joined by somebody who is working at local level in youth services, and as a Tipperary man I am glad Tipperary Regional Youth Service will be making a presentation. Hundreds or thousands of such groups are working with young people around the country. It is important that we harness the capacity of the youth, community and voluntary sector. This work cannot be done by the State alone. The Department has been clear in that regard. Several months ago we sent a submission to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs proposing the establishment of an innovation fund to support the youth, community and voluntary sector in engaging with young people around the youth guarantee, particularly the most disadvantaged young people.

As the representative from Ballymun noted, high-quality career guidance and counselling are crucial. We do not have sufficient case workers to engage with young jobseekers. In many cases, young jobseekers do not have work experience and they do not know where they are going in life. When I left school, which was neither today nor yesterday, I was unemployed for six months or longer. I recall what it was like to be in that space of confusion about what I wanted to do. It is crucial to provide a good career guidance intervention at that stage. A considerable number of schemes and initiatives have been established but they can be quite complex and the eligibility criteria differ. It can be challenging to deal with a young person who has been unemployed for only four months but would be perfect for a scheme that requires him or her to have been unemployed for six months. We might provide greater flexibility so that a local case worker can make a decision where a candidate does not fill all the criteria but would perfectly fit a course.

Engagement with local employers is key. We need to give young people education, training and work experience that is relevant to local labour markets. I understand the Department is working on providing independent and rigorous monitoring and evaluation from the start. Given that money is so short and the crisis so immense, we should not spend money if it will not deliver results for young people. This is why we should not carry out evaluations two or three years down the line, so that we are told what worked or what did not; we should have evaluation up-front that tells us what works from the outset. However, we need agreement on how we measure success. Our major consideration has to be getting young people off the live register and into jobs, but we must also acknowledge that some young people have to deal with significant challenges. The evaluation and monitoring must also reflect what we would call the distance travelled. A young person who has been out of education for several years will not get into a job in 12 months' time. We must consider where he or she was 12 months ago compared to his or her current position. If we focus solely on getting people off the live register there is a danger that we will churn people through temporary employment and they will end up back on the register. We must develop a meaningful and sustainable progression into decent work.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I invite Ms Cora Horgan to make her opening remarks on behalf of Tipperary Regional Youth Service.

Ms Cora Horgan:

When one speaks later in a meeting there is a danger of repeating what previous speakers have said. That is probably a good thing, however, because we are obviously singing from the same hymn sheet. I work with Tipperary Regional Youth Service and I am here to speak about the youth work response to the implementation of the youth guarantee. I have based my submission on a proven approach that has been operating in Tipperary for the last four years.

We have operated as a youth service since 1970, but since 2009 we have focused on young unemployed people in our programmes. We have delivered 11 programmes, the flagship of which is the work winner programme. Through the work winner programme we have worked with 145 young people in the last four years, 70% of whom have progressed to education and training or employment. We are very proud of this figure. I would like to highlight the collaboration we have had with local agencies, such as the Department of Social Protection, the education and training boards, local partnerships and, particularly, local employers. These partnerships have been very important in providing sustainable employment and education opportunities.

The young people with whom we work are furthest from the labour market. These are young people who left school at the age of 14 or 15 years. They may have been out of work and education for two or three years. That is a huge chunk of a young person's life. They are the most challenging young people. They face issues such as few or no employment opportunities, limited literacy skills, low levels of education and training and family backgrounds that are not necessarily supportive of going out to get a job. Rural issues also arise. Much of what was described by the representative from Ballymun is similar to our experience, but we must also contend with the rural nature of Tipperary town, Thurles and Cashel. This adds further complications to our young people's lives.

We have found the youth work approach to be an effective response. We work with the most marginalised young people who need initial support and guidance to get into the jobs market and remain in it. I agree that the relationship between the practitioner and the project worker is important from the outset. We are an integrated youth service and, as Mr. Doorley has noted, there are a considerable number of youth work projects around the country. We find that the integrated model provides ancillary support to young people in education, training or employment. Many of our clients have issues with drink and drugs. A couple of them have been off the road for the last four or five years and are living in a small and rural part of County Tipperary.

They are caught and they think moving to Thurles is a big deal and do not want to do it. Those are the people we are working with. We are working with people who think nothing of doing up a CV, badly written, badly spelled, folding it up to the size of a matchbox, putting it in their pocket and then handing it to an employer. They think that is okay, but it is not and they need to be told that. We are working with young people whose parents cannot figure out why Johnny would get out of bed in the morning to work for 35 hours per week in employment and educational training for no extra money. They do not do it and their peers do not do it, so we are looking at that culture. Going back to what Ms Whelan said, having that worker to support these young people is very important.

Our work winner programme is our flagship programme and comprises three main elements. The main element that is very beneficial is work placement, which constitutes 70% of the programme. We also have an important training element, including general training and specific skills training depending on what the young person may or may not want to do. Then we have the individualised supports. This involves having our worker sitting in a room on day one of the programme.

Normally the Department of Social Protection sends letters to the young people in the catchment area and we receive 100 people under 25 years of age through the door. We sit down with each of them and ask what they are interested in doing and look at whether they are eligible for and committed to the programme, because it is a commitment. It is 35 hours per week of working and training. It is not a part-time job. We devise a career plan and ask what is a meaningful job for each person. Because our young people are coming from a very low skills base they are not going to be looking for jobs in the IT or banking sectors. They are looking at local employment opportunities.

I have a list of the diversity of jobs the young people in one of our programmes will have been participating in. It is everything from farming to salting animal skins before sending them to tanneries - it is not a nice job but one of our people did it - to gardening, barbering and golf-course maintenance. These are all local jobs. If people do not want to leave Thurles or Tipperary town one must find them local jobs they will enjoy and get up in the morning and go to, and which might lead to employment after the placement if the people work well. We have a number of young people who started off in work experience in local businesses and who are now working there full time.

There was altruism on the part of the employers who wanted to give these young people a chance. Sometimes they had to be encouraged to do it but they bring these young people in, work with them and identify the type of training they would like this young person to do. For example, if we had a person working in a cheese factory and the employer said he or she would be much more employable if he or she had fork-lift driving skills, we would access those fork-lifting skills as part of the programme. It is about giving young people the opportunity to help themselves and make the most of those opportunities. Not everybody is perfect and not everybody has benefitted but we have a 70% progression rate.

One of the factors that makes the programme successful is that the young people are at the centre of it. They design, dictate and tell us what they want to do. They might not say they want to be world-class musicians or rocket scientists. A person might say he or she likes phones and people, and would like to work in a phone shop. There is a job in that. They can find work, meaning in life and opportunities for progression. The young person and the project worker choose the employer, not the other way around. We do not have employers seeking free labour. It is all about the young person.

Those support strategies I mentioned are very important, such as talking to the people's mothers, ringing them sometimes to get them out of bed in the morning and encouraging them to come back for day two because the people are not that bad and they will get on with them. That ongoing skill and support is very important. The youth service is based in a sustainable organisation, so even in a year's time, after the programme is finished, young people can contact somebody if the programme is not working out for them or if they want to progress to another opportunity. That ongoing support is there.

I was laughing when Mr. Doorley talked about being out of work for six months when he first left college because I was the same. I worked in community development in Charleville for four months for nothing because my mother kicked me out of bed in the morning and told me to go and do it. These people do not have mothers or fathers to kick them out of the bed.

The following are our recommendations for action. We need to maximise the Youth Work Ireland response. There is a network of youth services throughout the country and we should use them because they have relationships with these young people already. We must target the young people who are furthest from the labour market. They will cost us the most in the long run so if we can work with them and support them we will get value for money. We must be flexible, local and innovative, try something different and place the young person at the centre. We must design locally based and locally responsive supports, and we must try to ensure the youth guarantee is a guarantee for all.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I remind members and guests to turn off their mobile phones because it is interfering with the coverage of proceedings. It would be a shame if the witnesses' presentations were not televised and available to the media and on the Internet. The quality of them needs to come across. If people turn off their phones completely it will make their presentations better. Finally we have a joint contribution from the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU.

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

I thank the committee for the invitation. Ms Dunne and I are here as representatives of three separate groups - USI, ICTU and our colleagues in the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union, ISSU. This highlights a unique collaboration between three representative organisations which together represent more than 1 million people in our society. Over the summer we undertook this on the basis that the employment crisis facing young people in this country is unique and cannot be solved within any one Department or initiative. It is a wide-ranging problem and we require joined-up thinking and a real commitment to try to solve it.

While attending the consultation forum we have sent the submission with this document and are making our speeches today, and we welcome that. However, while JobBridge has many positive elements and has done much good, there has been abuse and exploitation of it, largely due to a lack of monitoring, oversight and ongoing evaluation by key stakeholders. With the commitment the groups here today have given to the youth guarantee and addressing this problem, with the implementation group established to design the implementation that is being sent to Europe next month, and with the ongoing roll-out of the scheme, we would like to be actively engaged and involved on an ongoing basis.

In the few minutes we have I will not be able to go into this document in great detail. It has been circulated to the members. Given that there is much to be done in the transition from second level to third level and the workplace and from third level to the workplace, as well as job creation, the groups represented all have something to offer in terms of the proposals in our policy document.

I would also like to address the issue of investment. One of the key points in our document is that adequate financial resources need to be identified if we are going to make this work as we want it to do for young people in Ireland - namely, if we are to ensure that no young person is left longer than four months without work, training or education. This is an area of concern for us arising from the budget. The figure of €400 million was touted in Europe as recommended. The Department of Social protection mentioned €300 million at the consultation forum. Mr. Doorley of NYCI mentioned €273 million. While the initial investment of €14 million is welcome, this should be very much the basic starting point. The fact that the social welfare cuts directed at young people bring about a saving of €32 million suggests €14 million is inadequate to address this problem in the grand scheme of things.

I will not talk too much about the problem because we are all aware of it. Some 120,000 people between the ages of 15 and 24 have emigrated in the last four years.

That is more than 200 people a day. In a recent study conducted by the Irish League of Credit Unions, 57% of third level students who are about to graduate, which is the constituency I represent, felt they might have to emigrate when they finished their courses, which, given the level of investment the State makes in these highly skilled, highly qualified young people, is a huge concern.

We are in total agreement that the youth guarantee needs to be targeted at specific groups and tailored in a way that makes it work. However, the feeling I got from the consultation forum was that it would be targeted at those from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds and the long-term unemployed. While that is correct, if the problem we have with graduate unemployment and the brain drain of young people who are graduating and leaving the country is not addressed by the youth guarantee, it still has to be addressed in some shape or form. The youth guarantee, therefore, should form only one element of a wider national jobs strategy for young people to address the wider crisis facing them in trying to find work in this country.

The OECD's recent report on Ireland particularly honed in youth unemployment and it was a damning critique of what has been done up to now in this area. It described Ireland as leaving behind too many people for too long, particularly young men. The scariest element of this was the direct link and correlation it drew between youth unemployment and suicide among young men. This underlines that this is a significant issue. The OECD also referred to youth entrepreneurship and putting specific programmes in place. There were positive elements in budget 2014 in this regard. Entrepreneurship should be embedded in curriculums across all programmes at third level. I have direct experience of this. Every business course at third level has an element of enterprise, innovation or entrepreneurship but many of the incubator centres and innovation units in the State relate to medical devices, cloud computing and energy engineering. However, within science and engineering programmes, there is a lack of taught entrepreneurship and, therefore, enterprise should be embedded in course curriculums.

We are also working on a job-ready graduate initiative, which we will bring to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in the coming weeks. This programme will allow young people who are in third level to attend various seminars, modules and workshops during their course. They will receive accreditation for this and, therefore, not only will they have academic degrees but they will be job-ready graduates who have shown motivation and skill sets in various areas that are important.

We also propose that the back-to-education allowance and various other labour activation schemes be more closely linked to the labour market. A national skills map should be put in place which identifies skills gaps, shortages and needs sectorally and regionally. Labour activation needs to be more closely linked to this.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I want to give Ms Dunne some time as well. Mr. O'Connor is six and a half minutes into his presentation. Will he summarise the rest of it to give adequate time to her?

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

Yes. We have proposals on best practice for work placements. Apprenticeships and work-based learning should be a core part of the youth guarantee, similar to the models in Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria. There should be learning opportunities and career advancement potential in any scheme that is introduced. This should not just be an extension of existing schemes. There needs to be investment in job creation for young people as part of the proposals.

Ms Fiona Dunne:

I am conscious that the committee has heard many presentations and there is agreement on many of the issues. The ICTU welcomes the concept of the youth guarantee. It is important because young people have been dramatically affected by the recession and they still are the largest unemployed group even though they have flexibility in that they can remain in or return to education or emigrate. We are disappointed with the funding for the youth guarantee. We have heard the numbers that have been indicated to make it an effective solution and it is unfortunate that more money has not been secured. A small amount has been allocated and we hope a larger investment will be made throughout. We hope it will deliver for young people whatever way considerations are made. This should be something new. It should not be a numbers exercise or an extension of what has gone before. It is not simply about moving people into training opportunities that are not tailored specifically to their needs. I agree with the NYCI that implementation should be speedy and done with sufficient resources, because the objective of a youth guarantee is to ensure our young people become active in the labour market in decent jobs with decent pay and conditions and opportunities. That is the core of what congress talks about in terms of decent work and opportunities.

We have outlined a number of principles in the Locked Out? document. As Mr. O'Connor said, the scheme should be additional. We would also like to have an input into the implementation and design of the scheme. Our organisations represent more than 1 million young people. It is important that their voice is heard.

The main objective of a youth guarantee should be a lead-in to sustainable employment, but there should also be a recognition that there are different routes back to employment. Training and education are hugely important, particularly when skills are obsolete, but work placements, as Ms Horgan mentioned, are also important for those who have a higher level of education and need learning opportunities within the workplace. There also should be a mechanism whereby jobseekers are identified along with the option that suits them most. That will have cost implications, but if money is spent on such a guarantee, it should be as effective as possible.

The scheme should also commission regular independent research to establish the contribution of each element to sustainable employment. It is important that there is an evaluation mechanism that is clearly monitored to ensure there is no exploitation such as has happened in the JobBridge scheme and to assess the sustainability and quality of employment on the scheme, including that which has been secured after training. Given the level of investment the Government is suggesting, decisions and choices will have to be made. The NESC suggested recently that difficult decisions have to be made with regard to targeting and that it may have to happen under the youth guarantee. The questions we have identified are as follows: Is it to be a quick fix? Is it about moving people into employment or is it a numbers exercise for those to whom it is easier to allocate positions but who may benefit anyway from an economic upturn which we hope will happen soon? Some young people who have been the subject of significant educational investment may leave the country. Is that more beneficial? Should the scheme address the needs of those who are further removed from the labour force, are harder to place and may not have the capacity to avail of economic growth? Congress believes that a targeted approach is necessary in the absence of additional and adequate funding.

The committee needs to consider that it is difficult to reach young people, particularly those living in unemployment black spots or those who may come from families that have experienced intergenerational unemployment. The guarantee can assist in breaking the cycle of unemployment. With such limited funds, we will need to ensure they deliver for our young people.

The crisis in youth unemployment cannot be fixed solely by the youth guarantee. There should be a national jobs strategy for young people and an investment stimulus. We should look to expanding sectors such as green jobs, hospitality and high tech industries.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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We have one hour and 20 minutes left. I ask members to focus on questions rather than statements. They have three minutes each and they should indicate the groups or individuals to whom they are directing their questions. We want to get as much out of this conversation as we can but we must be out of the room by 3.40 p.m.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for attending and taking the time to present to us. I have to take a Topical Issue debate in the Dáil shortly and I apologise in advance as I will have to leave early.

We are all very aware of the youth unemployment crisis and need to find solutions quickly that mean something to people. We have spent the past four or five years talking about the credit bubble, the problem with mortgages, different reports and proposals and we are still talking about them. It would not be acceptable to spend the next two or three years talking about the youth guarantee and what it could mean. We need to see real solutions. Like other members, I have been approached by young people to ask what can be done for them having completed a JobBridge internship. They are unable find a job. Mr. O'Connor from USI has pointed out that 120,000 people aged under 24 years have left the country in the past four years. That is the equivalent of two full years of leaving certificate students, given that 55,000 students sat the leaving certificate examinations this year. That is the level of the crisis.

On what will the €14 million allocated in the budget be spent? Can we get a breakdown of where the money will go and what it means? At the same time as €14 million was allocated €32 million was taken away from young people in the payments given to them. On the one hand, €32 million is taken out and, on the other, €14 million is given back, but we say we are serious about providing job guarantees and pathways.

Mr. Doorley of the National Youth Council of Ireland referred to the sum of €300 million to adopt the Swedish model. I ask him to elaborate somewhat on what he means by the Swedish model.

I welcome Ms Horgan from the Tipperary Regional Youth Service. She has said many of the young people with whom she deals may be apathetic towards work based on their background. They wonder why they should take up an opportunity and are unsure about how to present a CV. In some instances they are handing over crumpled CVs. Given that they are coming to her as mature young adults, what does this say about the education system? She is meeting them at a stage when it might be more difficult to change culture and attitudes. For young people in that category, what can we do differently to try to impart knowledge and address and shape attitudes along the way?

Mr. O'Connor of USI has said the youth guarantee should address the issue of graduate unemployment as opposed to just targeting certain socioeconomic groups. What suggestions does he have to make on graduate unemployment and how the JobBridge programme might target it?

Mr. John McKeon:

I will take the question on the figure of €14 million; the other questions are directed at some of the other speakers.

The €14 million is a figure within the Department of Social Protection's Estimates for next year and three items make up the bulk of it. I do not have the Estimates with me, but I will send the detailed figures to the secretariat separately. There are an extra 1,500 to 2,000 places for young people under the JobBridge programme at a cost of about €7 million to €7.5 million; there are an extra 1,500 Jobs Plus places at a cost of about €5 million; and there is the youth enterprise initiative in the order of €2 million. I will send the exact breakdown, but these are the three components that make up the figure. The Department of Education and Skills makes provision for places on Momentum. Its spend on Momentum for young people will be about €6 million, which excludes the social welfare payments we will continue to pay to the young people concerned. I believe I have broken down the figure of €14 million for the Deputy.

Mr. James Doorley:

I mentioned what was happening in Sweden. The Nordic countries have had a kind of youth guarantee scheme in place since the 1980s. The idea is that young people are not allowed to drift into long-term unemployment. The studies show that Sweden invests approximately €6,000 per young person covered by the youth guarantee. There is a figure of about €600 which covers administration costs, counselling costs, etc. The scheme has proved quite successful. The figures show that by investing money upfront, even after just 12 months in a job the investment is paid back. We acknowledge, however, that Ireland is not Sweden. We need to take the best from Sweden, while acknowledging that our social welfare and education systems are very different. I attended a seminar that Senator Reilly had organised in Cavan at which a speaker from Sweden was quite critical of some elements of the Swedish project, which is not perfect. If we implement a youth guarantee, it will not be perfect and will have problems. However, we should aim for the best. The figure of €6,600 is an indicator of the investment needed in order to make the guarantee work in practice. That is how we came up with the figure of €273 million. We acknowledge that we will not go from nothing in 2013 to €273 million or €300 million in year one. In practical terms, we need to have phased implementation, even if the money were available, which it is not. The Budget Statement referred to the figure of €14 million as an initial allocation. It certainly needs to be considerably more than this. Given the potential for the Government to get the money from European Commission funds - the €6 billion that needs to be spent in 2014 and 2015 - there is a great opportunity. If we get the right model for a youth guarantee, we will get a fair chunk of money in support. If we only invest €50 million, we will only receive 66% of that sum. Therefore, would make sense in the long run, apart from the need to address the issue.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Mr. O'Connor was asked a specific question.

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

I will let also Ms Dunne answer. The USI has been very supportive - I have been very vocal in recent months - since the scheme was announced at European level. The breakdown of the €14 million makes it clear that it will represent a small extension of existing labour activation schemes and the €2 million allocated for a youth entrepreneurship scheme. Committee members can draw their own conclusions from this.

To address the graduate employment issue properly, we need a national skills map identifying industry, sectoral and regional shortages, as well as areas in which graduates are unable to find work after they qualify and leave college. This needs to be correlated with areas of high youth unemployment and used to create more sustainable jobs. The job creation and stimulus package needs to be put in place as part of a national jobs strategy for young people. Until we reach that point, we are just trimming around the fringes of the issue.

Ms Fiona Dunne:

Our document outlines a number of measures to address the issue of graduate unemployment. JobBridge is to be extended and many graduates have taken up the positions available. We are aware of major issues of exploitation, although we acknowledge JobBridge gives people access to opportunities they would not normally have. However, the quality of these opportunities should be much higher and they should be better linked with what they have studied and their current skills and mapped to the areas and sectors in which jobs are available. There is a need for coherence across a number of areas in getting graduates into employment.

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

In the past week we have seen an advertisement for Irish Water show up. Having the tender for Irish Water going out through JobBridge is a matter of serious concern.

Ms Cora Horgan:

Deputy Charlie McConalogue asked what education could do for the young people concerned. The formal education sector obviously needs to continue to place an emphasis on career guidance and individual supports, particularly for those who are not academically minded. It is important not to leave the more practical subjects behind. We need to recognise the importance of programmes such as Youthreach. The sector of education that is sometimes lost is the informal education sector - the youth work sector. Poor old Johnny is getting an awful doing today. When he leaves school at 4 p.m., he goes to the youth service centre or wherever else.

It is the additional supports, work placements and mentoring which can be provided. The community voluntary sector in general and family support projects must also be considered. Such a boy would come from an intergenerational culture of unemployment and his parents would also need to be supported. It would be great if parents were supported before their children ended up on the path towards early school leaving. All of these ancillary community-based supports need to be resourced.

Ms Nuala Whelan:

Recently we ran a FETAC level 4 course for 18 to 24 year olds in the north Dublin area. We aptitude-tested the participants because it was the only means of selection we had available. Two out of three of the participants scored below average in a very simple words test, while one third scored below the 20th percentile, which is very low, with regard to their ability to undertake a FETAC level 4 course. It is important to recognise the skills base of many of the people presenting to us. It is not FETAC level 5 or 6; it is much lower, perhaps FETAC level 3 with much support. It is very useful to have organisations such as Youthreach becoming involved in upskilling.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Most of my questions will be directed at the Department, one of which has abeen addressed about the JobBridge scheme. There are huge concerns about employers, including the Government, abusing their position and availing of free labour under the guise of providing internships. I welcome the emphasis in Ms Whelan's presentation on career guidance and creating a career path. The Department has stated it will do much of this through its Intreo offices. I am not saying Ms Whelan should not be doing it also and also support the local employment services which also do this work. Will the Department outsource this work to organisations such as the Ballymun Job Centre or local employment services throughout the country and concentrate on other work, or will it employ career guidance teachers who have been laid off to do this work within the Department and Intreo offices?

A huge number of young people are unemployed and more are coming. If they do not emigrate, they will remain here. Is there capacity to capture all of these young people in meaningful training schemes which will lead to meaningful jobs and in education and post-leaving certificate courses? Many colleges of further education cannot cope with the level of demand. Will the youth guarantee allow for additional funding to be given to these colleges to increase the number of post-leaving certificate courses which are often targeted at filling gaps in the economy? They can identify quite quickly where a new factory will face skills shortages and capture these skills.

How many other EU countries fit the criteria to qualify for the fund? We have some idea that it will include Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. How many other countries fit the criteria? This will give us an indication of how much Ireland will benefit from the fund. Even though it sounds like a huge amount of money, when it is shared between 27 countries, it reduces.

I did not hear much about apprenticeships and we have gone through huge change in how they are rolled out. At the very least, apprenticeships are focused on a specific job, whereas other schemes on which the Department is concentrating do not guarantee a job or a qualification at the end. JobBridge has no training budget set aside. Community employment schemes have a reduced training budget, while Tús has none, which is of concern in moving towards the schemes.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Most of Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh's questions are directed at the Department. In the interests of time, rather than asking every group to respond to every question, I ask delegates to indicate their interest in responding to questions.

Mr. John McKeon:

A number of members have referenced JobBridge. When it comes to labour market interventions, nothing is perfect. We must be careful that perfection does not become the enemy of the good. JobBridge has many good aspects and I am concerned that we do not lose sight of this during the debate. We work very hard to try to detect and prevent abuses and anybody can report abuse to us. We have information on the website and conduct more than 3,000 random monitoring visits to firms. There is a very good progression rate. I have taken a personal interest in this issue and met quite a number of interns and the vast majority of feedback is positive. This is not to say, however, that there are not and will not be employers or interns who will seek to take advantage. That is the case in almost everything we do. I am concerned that negative commentary will outweigh the many positive aspects.

Local employment services will be part of the picture. Local employment services and job clubs are core and critical to what the Department does. We have provided almost €1 million for Ballymun local employment services each year and will continue to provide this funding. We use local employment services, in particular, for those who are more distant from the labour market such as those mentioned with low educational achievement. In our Intreo offices we will deal with the majority of people who are unemployed, including the majority of young people who are unemployed. Their major issue is not that they have significant barriers to employment but that they do not have employment opportunities. Intreo offices will focus on dealing with them and trying to job-match them. We provide some career guidance and job search assistance. In-depth detailed personal intensive one-to-one work is done for us by local employment services and this will continue. Some of the Intreo offices will do this also, but we see a role for local employment services in this regard.

As to whether there is enough capacity in the system to offer people opportunities, last year approximately 90,000 young people joined the live register, more than two thirds of whom had left after six months. The progression rate of young people off the live register is quite fast. The number of places we need to find is smaller, probably 20,000 to 30,000. We are examining whether we have capacity in the development of the implementation plan. We certainly have capacity on aggregate, as well as some additional capacity. If we use the capacity on aggregate and do not add to it, it will mean taking capacity away from other cohorts. We are examining this issue in the implementation plan. We have also asked the OECD to examine it.

With regard to with how many countries we must share the EU funding, I will ask Mr. Corcoran to answer this question because he is very closely involved in the discussion.

Mr. Terry Corcoran:

It is based on regions, as opposed to countries, with an unemployment rate for young people in excess of 25% last year. The amount of money allocated will be based on the number of young people in the regions rather than the country overall. I believe 23 countries will have access to the fund, but many of them will have very little access, as they will have a low youth unemployment rate overall, but they will have one or two regions where significant numbers of young people are unemployed. The estimate we have for funding for the next two years, including European Social Fund money and the front-loaded youth employment initiative fund money, is approximately €60 million per annum or slightly more. As was mentioned, the refund rate for programmes covered by the European Social Fund and the youth employment initiative will be approximately two thirds.

The overall spend would need to be approximately €100 million to draw that down. As members will have seen in the answers to parliamentary questions, we are already spending an estimated €175 million or €180 million on providing opportunities for young people. The €60 million per year will go some way towards funding that and any further expansion.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Does Mr. O'Connor wish to add anything?

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

I will make two brief points, one on JobBridge and one on apprenticeships. On the former, the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, called on the then Minister for education, Batt O'Keeffe, for a national internship scheme in 2010. JobBridge was subsequently introduced. It is important to clarify that, while the scheme is imperfect, it has done much good for many young people.

I will revert to my previous point, as some members of the committee probably want me to clarify further. An internship, by its nature, should be intern focused. When I think of an internship, I think of something that provides real learning opportunities and career advancement potential for the intern. The bad type of internship, some of which we have seen in JobBridge, is the idea that it is a cheap way of getting work done for the employer. A bad example in recent years saw the job of stacking shelves in Tesco being included in JobBridge. The idea was to dress it up as a busy, customer-focused work environment, but such a job has no place on an internship scheme. It could be argued that a one-off Government tender that advertises itself as providing learning outcomes in the practical installation of water meters may not provide a significant number of future job opportunities for an internship. It is a question of into which category the role fits.

An apprenticeship review is being undertaken by the Department of Education and Skills. Work-based learning needs to form a crucial part of the youth guarantee. Apart from a small number of sectors, Ireland does not do apprenticeships particularly well or place sufficient emphasis on them.

I will highlight a point that may have been missed in the overall budgetary argument. Although we are having this conversation, we need to focus more on apprenticeship work-based learning. The budget has provided a mechanism under which people engaging in FÁS apprenticeships, which were previously State-funded, must now make pro rata contributions. This sends a mixed message about the direction we want to take. The question of whether we want added investment or less investment must be answered.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Ms Dunne indicated. I will then allow further questions.

Ms. Fiona Dunne:

I wish to make a point about JobBridge. I will not reiterate Mr. O'Connor's comments, but internships should be about real learning opportunities and outcomes for the individual. Importantly, they should not replace or displace jobs. This is a matter of providing access for young people who will not have the opportunity to gain experience in the workplace, to learn what the world of work is like, etc.

One of our documents discusses how there used to be more apprenticeships many years ago, for example, Safe Pass. Many of those apprenticeships could be reintroduced by growing the tourism and hospitality sector of the domestic economy. They would not necessarily need to last as long as four years - they could be shorter. I am referring to restaurants, the hotel trade and so on, which want a higher level of customer service. It all ties in.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I will allow two members to contribute, Senators O'Donnell and Moran.

Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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I do not know where to start. It is like sitting in the city of the disavowed. I will start with Mr. O'Connor. He is interesting and is a good spokesman for his organisation. I taught in his organisation for 30 years. I am a great believer in young minds, how they articulate where they want to go and how they can bring cities with them. Well done to him.

Mr. O'Connor made a good point about entrepreneurship within the technology and pharmaceutical sectors not being meted out in third level science and engineering courses. He forgot the arts. I am unsure as to whether I agree with his definition of apprenticeships. He seemed to recoil when he heard "Irish Water". He does not necessarily see it as something for apprentices. A job is a job and experience is experience. Irish Water has great plans to become a leader in how we operate. There is more involved than digging a road and installing a meter.

I take up the point made by Mr. O'Connor to the Department, as its presentation gives the sense of filling extra spaces. I do not get the feeling of a national jobs strategy of the type Mr. O'Connor discussed. All of these egrets beneath the surface are not being brought together in a national strategy. Will the departmental officials comment on this?

In terms of our €14 million, does Mr. O'Connor believe that we should start with graduates or the furthest away from the job market? Who has a better chance or could start on a better footing? Do the departmental officials know whether other member states have submitted youth guarantee plans? I am confused about whether we are getting €14 million, €16 million or €100 million.

According to the Ballymun Job Centre's excellent presentation, it will inform the Department of Social Protection about the activation of young people on the register. When will we know the lessons it has learned?

I suggest that Mr. O'Connor should start with the banks, which provide a rate of 4.5% in their graduate programmes but increase it to 9.8% within a month of them qualifying. This is immoral and unethical and is a factor in people not being able to take money home even after they get jobs.

Is there a cap on the amount of money for which we can apply? I am confused. Is there any possibility that the youth guarantee will be extended to people aged less than 18 years, for example, 16 year olds?

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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There is a vote in the Seanad.

Mary Moran (Labour)
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I will be quick. I apologise in advance. We are discussing the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill.

Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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I need the answers to my questions. What will I do?

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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They will be read into the record.

Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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No.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Yes.

Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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We could suspend.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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We could suspend for a few minutes, but I will take Senator Moran's contribution before making a decision.

Mary Moran (Labour)
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I will be brief. I thank everyone for those excellent presentations. The youth service workers are the right people in the right jobs, as it is obvious from their presentation that they know what they are talking about. This is key to the youth guarantee. People must be on top of their briefs and know what is expected of them. The young person must be the focus of the youth guarantee and feel that what he or she is doing will lead to something else.

What extra training will be provided to those who are in charge of initiating and briefing young people? Will extra staff be in place in Intreo offices? How will the Department ensure that the jobseeker is kept at the centre of the process?

I know that we are flying, but I wanted to ask a further question. Has a breakdown of the cost per person on the scheme been estimated? As Mr. Doorley stated, we are not Scandinavia, but how does the Department plan to make our youth guarantee different?

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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In deference to the Senators, particularly Senator O'Donnell who is working on this subject, I propose that we suspend until 3 p.m. before resuming this conversation. Is that agreed?

Terry Brennan (Fine Gael)
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I have a small question to ask.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Does the Senator wish to ask it when we resume?

Terry Brennan (Fine Gael)
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Yes.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Would Senator Brennan like to ask his question now?

Terry Brennan (Fine Gael)
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I congratulate everybody here today on their presentations. As far as I am concerned the future of our youth is in great hands. As labour market conditions vary from country to country, Ireland cannot simply copy the Scandinavian model. Mr. McKeon said the Department would take on board the better points of that model. What EU funding will be available to Ireland and what is the latest date for application for this funding? Also, for how much does the Department propose to apply? Like Senator Moran, I would like to know the anticipated cost per participant on the scheme.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I now invite any of the witnesses who wish to respond to the questions from the three previous speakers to do so.

Mr. John McKeon:

On the national jobs strategy, the Action Plan for Jobs is managed by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. We see our role within the Department of Social Protection as being to ensure that as many jobs as possible created under that plan are filled by people on the live register. This was one of the motivations behind the JobsPlus initiative. We want to ensure that as many jobs as possible are taken up by people on the live register, particularly those who have been on it for a long time. While youth unemployment is a huge problem throughout Europe and within Ireland, a more profound problem is long-term unemployment, including long-term unemployment independent of age. For example, youth unemployment in Ireland according to the QNHS is approximately 64,000, of which 20,000 people have been unemployed more than 12 months. As such, less than one-third have been unemployed for more than 12 months. More than half of those over 25 who are unemployed have been unemployed for at least 12 months, which is the bigger problem for us. As such, the jobs strategy must be a jobs strategy at a national level that creates jobs rather than focusing on particular cohorts.

With regard to the other member states and how much Ireland will and can apply for, the total amount available is €6 billion and the incremental amount is €3 billion. Some €3 billion of the funding available in Europe is money already distributed throughout member states through the European Social Fund. The proposal is to earmark some of that European Social Fund money for youth unemployment initiatives. In Ireland, we have already used this money on initiatives such as Youthreach, which are already targeted at young people. The additional €3 billion is from the youth employment initiative. Under the European Social Fund, 50-50 matching applies, which means Ireland must match every euro it draws down from the European Social Fund. This is not required under the youth employment initiative. This is where the 66% funding comes from.

In terms of how much we can apply for, we can apply for as much of it as we want. We can be as ambitious as we want and will be as ambitious as we can realistically be.

Terry Brennan (Fine Gael)
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Does Mr. McKeon any idea how much Ireland will apply for?

Mr. John McKeon:

The plan has yet to be finalised. It is one of the issues in respect of which we have acquired OECD involvement. None of the other European countries has yet submitted its plans. I presume all countries will submit their applications on the last day of December. We will all be watching one another. We are awaiting what the OECD has to say before finalising the plan. If one does the rough arithmetic, it is not positive. There are approximately 5 million unemployed young people in Europe and approximately 60,000 young unemployed people in Ireland. If one divides the €6 billion by 5 million and multiplies by 53,000 one gets Ireland's likely pro rata share. We have an expectation of approximately €60 million, but are optimistic we can do better than that. As mentioned earlier by Mr. Corcoran, this would equate to approximately €100 million within the State.

On training for facilitators and career guidance people and whether we have sufficient staff, there are 300 people in the Department who are trained employment advisers, most of whom have been educated through a diploma level course in NUI Maynooth in adult guidance. However, 300 staff is nowhere near sufficient. The Department also funds approximately 170 staff in the local employment services. This means we have 470 dedicated staff in this area. However, we probably need close to 2,000 people. These are the published OECD and European Union figures. We are currently redeploying an additional 300 staff within the Department.

We are training them currently and we plan to redeploy a further 200 next year, meaning that we will add 500 to the mix between this and next year. In parallel we are considering contracting options and the possibility of using outside resources to complement ours and those of the local employment services. That is an option, as it is quite urgent that we get extra resources in place. The Government has approved consideration of that contracting option and the staff are being trained.

I have mentioned before that guidance within the Department is a continuum, from personal guidance of people with real barriers to direction on whether people are applying for a type of job that suits them. By and large, the Department is at the directive guidance end of matters. We look to local employment services, including guidance counsellors in education and training boards, for guidance at a more personal level. It is not that fine a cut and the issue is not black and white. By and large, that is the approach we will take.

Mr. Terry Corcoran:

There is the question of those who are under 18. The Department tends to get people when they are 18 because they are entitled to jobseeker's assistance from then. Up to the age of 18 it is likely that any implementation plan responsibility would be seen as lying with the Department of Education and Skills. In Ireland currently there is an offer of free secondary education up to the age of 18 and the completion of senior cycle. Separately, there is a small proportion of people who drop out before that age, and the main provision is through the Department of Education and Skills in the form of Youthreach, which has been referred to already by several speakers. It is run through VECs - now the education and training boards - with community training workshops operating a similar model to that which has been funded to date through FÁS. It will now effectively be integrated into the education and training boards as well. Examining the number of young people who drop out before that age and the range of provision through Youthreach and community training workshops, it seems that for those falling into great difficulty there are substantial levels of provision between workshops, Youthreach and a few other programmes for people who drop. That issue will be addressed.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I reiterate the note on privilege that we give out at the beginning of the meeting. Witnesses are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given. Witnesses are asked to respect the parliamentary practice that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

Ms Nuala Whelan:

Senator O'Donnell asked a question about when we will know if the pilot is working in Ballymun. We have local and national implementation teams led by the Department of Social Protection. That has been happening over the past few months and there has been much planning going into the process. Towards the end of this month we will start to engage with young people in the area. There are 750 young people in Ballymun who fit into the pilot and we anticipate that this number will rise to approximately 1,000 by the end of the pilot. There is an evaluation built into the pilot and the Department of Social Protection is going through the contract process. The tender is out. We hope that will be a formative type of evaluation that will run with us through the pilot.

We have much experience in doing this with a general range of clients and we always track or monitor the work, trying to identify lessons. Many of the methods and interventions in this pilot are based on very good lessons learned from previous projects. We know they work and now we can see what kind of impact will be made on younger client groups.

Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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When will that happen?

Ms Nuala Whelan:

It is starting at the end of the month and I presume the ongoing evaluation will result in regular indications of progress, perhaps on a quarterly basis or even sooner.

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

To respond to the contributions from Senator O'Donnell, I can give a direct answer to a direct question. If it was a case of investing €14 million, I would argue that it should go in the same way as every other cent in the constrained funding environment of the country, which is to the people who need it most. I agree it should be targeted at lower socioeconomic and disadvantaged groups, as currently they need it most. That being said, we should not get into the argument about whether-----

Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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The witness brought that up.

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

The Senator asked the question.

Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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The issue was brought up by Mr. O'Connor. I was only responding.

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

I brought it up, as the argument is between prevention and cure. The cure is to target people who are long-term unemployed and need this the most. That makes absolute sense. At the same time, prevention would amount to allowing people who have been the recipients of much investment - that is, highly skilled graduates - to leave the country because there is a lack of opportunities. I argue that we should not do so. For society, the right way to invest the money in the first instance is to target those who need it most. For the economy, there would be massive long-term damage if we did not allow for the people in whom we have invested much and who have much to offer in helping the country to recover. If the youth guarantee is not going to be the solution for those people, we must formulate an alternative.

On the youth entrepreneurship issue, there is the idea that it should be across all disciplines and course curriculums, but we must also move towards a position in which students across departments work together as part of a project team. Therefore, somebody in the school of business who is extremely competent at developing a business plan should work with the student in science, engineering or the arts. We do not do enough of that in Irish third level education.

I mentioned the job-ready graduate scheme earlier. The Union of Students in Ireland is looking to work with a number of different groups with which we already have relationships, including Enterprise Ireland, Hays Recruitment and Cara Communications to deliver workshops and seminars on public speaking and communication skills, employability and aptitudes, CV development, interview skills and entrepreneurship. By the end of a student's time in college, one should be able to say that he or she has come away with academic qualification and displayed a competency and motivation to work in other areas.

Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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That is an argument for the Department of Education and Skills and the universities and not one for here.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Others wish to contribute and there are only 20 minutes remaining. I will go to members of the committee first.

Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)
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Mr. O'Connor did not answer my question about Irish Water and why he was against------

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I would prefer if we did not use the entity's name. Perhaps there could be a generalised comment on public bodies taking people on internship schemes.

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

I attempted to address this earlier. As far as I am concerned, an internship should provide a real learning opportunity and career advancement. The Senator is correct in saying that Irish Water is a big project. The internships advertised are for a specific piece of work that is time-bound; once it is complete, I do not see a career advancement opportunity.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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I will not read the warning a third time.

Brendan Ryan (Dublin North, Labour)
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In his contribution, Mr. Doorley suggested that we should not over-promise in what we are speaking about today. What we are discussing today is more than a promise; it is a guarantee. I am particularly uncomfortable discussing a guarantee for young people in that if we under-deliver, there will be a big gap in the delivery of expectations. An implementation plan is being formulated and it must be delivered before the end of the year. Will that be acted upon? We need to deliver against that guarantee rather than just a budget. At a minimum, we must consider how to deliver the guarantee and the cost of that delivery. If we cannot deliver the guarantee for certain resource reasons, we may have to step back a bit. It would be unfortunate and disappointing to be led purely by a budgetary sum. Ms Whelan spoke about the Ballymun job centre. That suggests it is the way to go and would be best practice.

How does that pilot fit in with the implementation plan? Is it a pilot for the methodology in terms of what will be rolled out as part of the plan?

I refer to Mr. Doorley's contribution. He said it can be done and he talked about the disappointment about the sum of money. Does he believe it can be delivered in the absence of that sum of money? If there is such a gap in terms of funding, how does he believe it can be delivered?

I refer to Tipperary Regional Youth Service and Ms Horgan's contribution. She talked about what is being done to find people a job. Are there jobs which people cannot find on their own? Do they need the help of services like her one to find them?

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentations. There is a major role for the universities and the institutes of technology in terms of tackling youth unemployment. I would like to hear the witnesses views on whether they believe there is a role for increased levels of research and development in the universities and institutes of technology and whether that could be brought about through the youth guarantee and funding from it.

I refer to the JobBridge programme and the figures we are getting of three out of five participants graduating to full employment within five months. Do the witnesses believe we could look at trying to incentivise that programme further by channelling resources towards increasing the amount a participant receives? In rural areas and in the constituency I serve, one of the problems relayed to me is that people are delighted to get an internship, that they are learning, that it is good for their curriculum vitae and that they feel it enhances their prospects for future employment. However, the cost of travelling to work and paying for lunches and so on is far more than €50 in some cases, especially if one considers someone might have to travel from Ballinskelligs to Tralee in County Kerry, which is the same as travelling from Dublin to Limerick time-wise. Is that something that could be considered? I have raised it previously. We could consider increasing the €50 to try to add success to what is overall a successful programme, although like every programme, it has flaws.

Over the past two and a half years since getting this particular job, my office has been almost like a recruitment agency. I get many CVs from people of all ages and from all socioeconomic backgrounds desperately trying to find employment. It is something which weighs very heavily on me. It is probably the same for every member. One is trying to put people in contact with different employers and so on.

We are badly lacking a register of people available to work which outlines their details - not necessarily their private details but details such as gender, age, qualifications and skills - so that prospective employers could log on to a website, look at these details, try to short-list people and make contact with them. It would be a great help. In a way, it would be like a dating website but for employment. It would not disclose someone's personal information but rather basic information. Employers have asked me if I know people qualified in certain areas. It would cut out the middle man. Perhaps funding from this could go towards establishing a website.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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There is a great tradition of matchmaking in Kerry.

Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein)
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The questions I have are based on discussions I have had with young people at different conferences I have attended. Many of the questions are geared towards the Department. In terms of the youth guarantee and young people not in employment, education or training, how we will get a real sense of the number of young people who are in that situation who might traditionally be beyond the reach of employment services or who might not have been eligible for jobseeker's allowance or any of those schemes? How will we get to the starting base to know the reality of what we are dealing with rather than just looking at the live register?

Mr. Doorley mentioned churning. How will we avoid churning? If we put people through a scheme, how will we prevent them going back to square 1 once they finish their placement? We do not want to move people from scheme to scheme. How will we make sure they are in a sustainable position? How will we track these people? The National Youth Council of Ireland had a conference on the youth guarantee and a representative from the Finnish national youth council said that of those who completed the guarantee in Finland, 39% had disappeared from the statistics and that they do not know what they are doing.

I refer to conditionality and the concerns raised about that. Will sanctions be imposed on people who do not take up a particular position? I mention the dangers that might surround an obligatory system which might not match particular skills or needs. The long-term unemployed might eventually drift back into unemployment. I know the career plan will be important but if we do not do it right, will the participant be punished for being put on the wrong scheme which he or she did not like and comes off it? Is there room for trial and error? As was mentioned, we must ensure jobseekers are at the centre of the initiative and that they are active participants. Ms Whelan mentioned that we need to ensure young people do not just take up positions on a course based on availability in an area.

I refer to payments made to young jobseekers. How will that happen? Deputy Griffin mentioned people from rural areas. If somebody in a rural area is looking at a position in his or her catchment area which does not meet his or her skillset, how will we ensure he or she can go from Cavan to Dublin, for example, to do a course which suits his or her career trajectory? Ms Whelan mentioned the rurality issue also. Does she believe the pilot in Ballymum will transfer to rural areas? How will it be provided for in the future?

I refer to funding. The Swedish model was mentioned. Based on the Swedish model, the ILO put the cost of the youth guarantee in Ireland at €347 million, without the administrative costs. When one adds the administrative costs, it will be €435 million. How did we get to the €14 million formula? How was it worked out that we would allocate €14 million? I am a big fan of evidence-based policy. What was actually used to say €14 million?

Mr. John McKeon:

On the issue of the guarantee, I absolutely agree the word "guarantee" has a meaning in English which maybe some of our European colleagues did not quite appreciate. We will have to take a realistic approach to our implementation plan, given the amount of resources we have and the kind of resources which will be available. We will ensure that whatever we say, we can guarantee it will happen. The European Union has recognised that implementation of the plan will have to be phased in countries which are particularly challenged from a fiscal and budgetary position. We will have to take that approach. That is one of the things we have asked the OECD. We have asked how we should phase our roll out. If a four month guarantee is the ultimate objective, where do we start?

Do we start with a particular cohort and say, for that cohort it is four months or do we start a nine-month guarantee and work back towards four? We have asked them to come up with options and to give us the best advice on that but whatever we do, we want to stand behind the word "guarantee". This is very important.

There were a number of questions about the Ballymun pilot scheme. Originally the intention in Europe was that the pilot schemes would run for a year and then at the end of that year, we would have the youth guarantee. In practice, however, they did not give us the money to run the pilot scheme until a year after they said they would so we are now in a situation that the scheme in Ballymun is less of a pilot than a learn-as-you-go one. We must be realistic about that now.

On the question of the register, we are looking at setting one up. We currently have a website, www.jobsireland.ie, with some of the functionality described earlier. We are looking at developing that further and hope to do so in the coming year to allow for the possibility of matching jobseekers' capabilities to available jobs, on an anonymous basis.

A question was asked about the number of young people currently on schemes and how they are tracked and I will ask Mr. Corcoran to respond to that question in a moment. Regarding the conditionality issue, the Government policy on all activation is a rights and responsibilities one. In other words, people have a right to get support from the State but they also have a responsibility to engage with the State. We will be carrying that principle through. In Ms Horgan's example, there was not as much conditionality as it might have seemed because Mammy was there in the background, kicking people out of bed in the morning. Sometimes, conditionality is needed and purely voluntary schemes can be too soft. If we are going to spend money, we want to make sure that people will get work at the end. We will not be doing anything foolish and that is where the good guidance counsellors, career officers and facilitators come in. We will not be directing people to schemes that are obviously not suitable for them. That is not our intention at all. However, where a case officer identifies an intervention that would seem to be appropriate for a person, we would expect that person to work with that intervention or have a very good reason not to.

Mr. Corcoran will now deal with the question about young people on schemes and how we measure progress.

Mr. Terry Corcoran:

Senator Reilly raised two questions, the first of which concerned young people not engaged in education, employment or training. This measure has been tossed around a lot at EU level, based on EUROSTAT data but it obviously includes all of the unemployed who are in touch with us. Therefore, the issue is trying to identify the numbers of young, inactive people who are not in touch with any of the services. We are looking at this question using data from the CSO as well as our own data and have calculated that the number of people aged 18 to 24 who are inactive and not in touch with any of the services is extremely small. That is primarily because the means test for people living at home for jobseeker's allowance is such that people will get something, even if their parents have middle to high levels of income if they register with the welfare services. That means that such registration is particularly high in Ireland relative to other countries. We will include data on that question in the implementation plan when we are writing it up.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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We are nearly out of time and I want to give others a chance to make a final contribution.

Mr. Terry Corcoran:

Fine, but I wish to answer the other question Senator Reilly asked about tracking and the situation in Finland. We are working on improving our data on tracking people after programmes and have been doing so for a while. It is not going to be perfect because people do not always tell us where they have gone when they leave the welfare system. Also, the flow of data on peoples' entry to employment is lagged in Ireland because we only get that information through P35 forms at the end of the year. However, we are working on that and hope not to have as bad an experience as Finland in that regard.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Mr. Doorley is next.

Mr. James Doorley:

I agree with Deputy Ryan about the guarantee. The EU commitment is that services will be available after four months. However, we would not want the message to go out to young people that if they are unemployed for four months all of these options will be available to them if we cannot deliver. That would be very detrimental and Deputy Ryan is right about that. We are reaching a point where some hard choices will have to be made and obviously the Government and the Department will have to make those choices about where we start. I acknowledge that we have probably been wrong in our approach in looking at the money and working backwards. What we really need to do is determine what we need to deliver a youth guarantee. We need to work out how many places we need, how much support is required and then examine the money question. Even leaving aside the EU money, we need to look at it in the broader context of an investment in young people. Obviously it will be great to get the money from the EU but we must not develop our plan solely on the basis of amounts emanating from the EU.

Another issue which has not been raised is the contribution of employers. We have a parallel labour market in a way, with very high tech areas where employers are screaming out for skilled people and on the other had, we have employers who are finding it difficult to get people to take the jobs they have on offer. I am of the view that because employers benefit from the fact that people have received education and training, they should make some contribution to this. If this is going to cost money but they are going to benefit from it, then it should not be just the taxpayer who is investing in the youth guarantee. That needs to be examined, although perhaps not in the short term, given the timeframe involved. However, in the longer term, the larger employers in particular, many of whom would probably be willing to contribute to a youth guarantee, should be asked to do so.

I agree with Deputy Griffin's point about the role of the universities and institutes of technology. We would be of the view that the scheme should be nationally led but locally delivered, particularly in areas where there are universities or institutes of technology. They could contribute a lot to the scheme. Even in the context of Ballymun, DCU is only down the road and is a big employer.

Finally, regarding the question of sanctions, we must have a real debate on that. We are concerned to ensure that the youth guarantee be seen as an opportunity for people. Some young people might be sanctioned when they may have literacy issues and might not even understand the letters they are receiving. We must have some discussion about that issue.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Thank you. Ms Horgan is next.

Ms Cora Horgan:

I will be very brief. To respond to Deputy Ryan's question, there are some jobs out there but we have found that because it is a locally-based solution, they are willing to create opportunities within their businesses for young people. It is then up to young people to prove themselves and to create a permanent space for themselves. We have also had a number of smaller firms in Tipperary who, because of their participation in this scheme and their general development, have new and upcoming opportunities and they will go for the devil they know rather than the devil they do not know. If they have worked with somebody already through a scheme, they will make those opportunities available to that person in the first instance.

Deputy Griffin asked about young people taking up jobs. Young people have to be convinced of the merits of taking up employment and of the benefits of work experience to their curriculum vitae. That might go some way towards cancelling out the costs of taking up work or work experience, particularly when they are not getting additional supports. Sometimes we underestimate the enthusiasm and eagerness of our young people to get work.

Finally, local employment services and jobs clubs do exist and are certainly an avenue for providing opportunities for young people, via the youth guarantee. However, there must be other responses too. Some of those responses may need to be softer because we are dealing with young people who are under 25 and who have a different set of needs to older unemployed people.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Thank you. Ms Whelan is next.

Ms Nuala Whelan:

Regarding Senator O'Reilly's comments about churning and tracking, if this is done within the context of a very good, quality-driven career guidance process, there should not be a high level of churning. We should be able to track clients and indeed, we are able to do that through the job centres in terms of following up and finding out the outcomes for clients. A lot of this comes down to the relationship between the practitioner and the client and the approach taken. When conditionality is brought in, once the approach is very positive and supportive and the client feels that he or she is being supported into the labour market, then conditionality will not be such a big issue. Our experience is that young people are very willing to work with us and to look at the opportunities that are available to them.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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Mr. O'Connor, finally.

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

We would agree with many of Senator Reilly's comments on the youth guarantee. Deputy Griffin made reference to the role of the universities and institutes of technology and as I said earlier, they have an enormous role to play in terms of transitions. On page 18 of our submission, we have outlined issues such as a national skills initiative and employability skills initiative, which are very important in this context.

In response to the point made by departmental representatives earlier, namely the idea that job-creation initiatives will fall out of the national action plan for jobs rather than a specific programme or initiative tailored for young people, reports over the last 12 months would suggest that the Tánaiste has been working with the OECD on a Europe-wide jobs strategy for young people and how that could be implemented in Ireland. We have heard a lot in recent weeks about how the best place for young people is in work, education or training, which we genuinely believe and agree with. However, if we are serious about that and are willing to cut social welfare payments to people under 26, as has been done with the Social Welfare Bill, then we must also be serious about developing specific programmes to ensure that workplace education and training places are made available to young people.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)
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That concludes our discussion. I wish to thank the representatives from the Department of Social Protection, Ballymun Job Centre, the National Youth Council of Ireland, Tipperary Regional Youth Service, USI and ICTU for their helpful presentations to the committee.

Senator O'Donnell will continue with the work in this regard and the matter will come before the committee again in due course.

The joint committee now stands adjourned until tomorrow morning at 10.30 a.m. when we will give further consideration to the general scheme of the Gender Recognition Bill 2013. The meeting will take place in room A, LH2000.