Mr. John McKeon:

To follow up on what Mr. Spellman said, we have also developed a new curriculum of training for all of our staff for all roles. This is a modular curriculum in which all staff involved in the role must participate if they are to stay in the role or move into it. This training includes client interaction and communications. I accept the point made by the Senator that we all go on communication skills courses, but sometimes we fail in a difficult situation.

On the question of people with a construction sector background and the live register, if we look at a narrow definition of this sector - painters, plasterers, plumbers - there are approximately just over 30,000 people on the register with that background. We in the Department are anxious that as the construction industry expands, these people will be the first to get the jobs. We are working hard at building up our ability to work with employers, to try to place candidates from the live register in employment opportunities as they arise. We have been working closely with the Construction Industry Federation in that regard also.

This is where schemes such as JobsPlus can be very useful. There are currently over 4,000 people on the JobsPlus scheme. Over 60%, about 61% or 62%, of those people were previously two years unemployed. About two thirds of people who are long-term unemployed and moving into employment would be one to two years unemployed and one third would be more than two years unemployed. JobsPlus is successfully turning this on its head. We will be very aggressive in using these schemes to try to ensure employers take the very long-term unemployed into employment. There is a social clause in all Government contracts, particularly in construction sector contracts, requiring construction firms with State contracts to take at least 10% of their employees from the long-term unemployed, by referral from the Department of Social Protection. This is a foot in the door for us. We can then have a proper conversation and we are very conscious of this.

The question on why young people would not work even in the good years is a question that is perhaps as old as time itself. One can look at education, family circumstances, background and so on. This is one of the reasons, in some of the Youth Guarantee initiatives, we have focused on things which will help young people who even in the good years would not have got employment. We have things such as the youth developmental internship, as we are calling it, or First Steps, in which we hope to get employers to sponsor 1,500 jobs for people who normally would not get passed the screening process and, to put it crudely, normally would not be allowed past the reception desk. We are working with employers to get them to sponsor job opportunities for young people who are particularly distant from the labour market. We have also made changes to community employment schemes and so forth in order to encourage young people to take part.