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.