Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion

2:50 pm

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I do not agree with the Secretary General on that point. We have to address that issue because it will be a problem in the future. There is no point in PayPal investing and creating 1,000 jobs here if we can only aim to fill 500 of them. I accept that it is not a short-term win but addressing it involves more than the input of the Department of Education and Skills in that it must be driven. The question is: do we want to solve this problem or not? A job-driven solution is needed. It is a problem if we cannot win these jobs because people do not have the required proficiency in a language. I agree that having a knowledge of a language is not good enough; we need to look beyond this.