Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I welcome Ms King. I appreciate that she has been here a long time already so I will just go back to what we are about. We are looking at the review of the capital programme and so I would like to ask Ms King a couple of direct questions about what she would support in the review.

Bearing in mind the comments that she has already made about supporting a regional report, would she broadly support the completion of the motorway system that was undertaken at the height of the boom? I refer, in particular, to the N4 to Sligo, which remains unfinished. Would she also support the notion of the Atlantic corridor? Would she support the notion of developing a contact like the road from Limerick, for example, to Kerry; to Tralee and Killarney, but also the road from Limerick to Cork? There are a lot of people employed in that region in pharma, which Ms King referenced already, but also in agriculture and food processing. We have to make a recommendation to the Minister for Finance and, while roads would not necessarily be the first priority, the most dangerous thing of all is to have a half-finished road where people exit from a full motorway system because this can cause a tremendous number of accidents. I think we know about those. That is one question.

I know congress has been involved in respect of the subject matter of my second question for a long time. I was both angry and shocked by a statement and interviews in the media in the past couple of days by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, to the effect that he is giving the nod, very strongly, to a third terminal at Dublin Airport which he envisages would possibly be privately-owned. I know congress is not necessarily part of a formal partnership, but I find that notion coming from a member of the Government at this point extraordinary. There was a lot of public money invested in the second terminal. While business at Dublin Airport is growing, my understanding is that there is still capacity there. More importantly, airports are strategic national assets. In the context of the development plan, would ICTU share the view that assets like airports, which are publicly-owned in this country, should continue to be publicly-owned in terms of their development? I do not know if ICTU has a position on it, but certainly earlier Ms King was talking about various races to the bottom. I see all the signs of that in the proposal for a third, privately-owned, terminal at Dublin Airport at the moment.

On the issue of upskilling of people for potential job changes, does ICTU have any view? Ms King probably has more insight into it than many of us. When I was in government, and particularly when I was the Tánaiste, I worked very hard to get the apprenticeship programme started again in public organisations such as the ESB. The organisations in question did restart it. I am really shocked that, notwithstanding the development of SOLAS, the numbers taking up apprenticeships are very small. Does ICTU have a view as to how that might be improved? We know that more than 55% of people leaving secondary school are going on to some form of third-level, higher or further education. However, many of the remainder would be interested in apprenticeships. There are very few opportunities being offered to them and I would be quite fearful of those young people falling behind. The number of women apprentices also remains depressingly low. The German and Austrian models, in which there is very strong employer buy-in to sponsoring apprenticeships, offer us a very good model for providing really good opportunities for young people.

In the context of previous discussions on housing, does ICTU have a position on affordable housing? There are many young people employed in the public service and other employments, as the Secretary General of ICTU pointed out. Many of them have now been in employment for eight to ten years. They may want to buy a house on their own, they may be in a relationship, they may have started a family. In the housing debate, my view is that affordable housing is important, particularly for younger people or, perhaps, for older people where there has been a split in a relationship and where the person who is leaving the family home will have to find another home. A large number of the people affected by that are generally men, perhaps in their 50s. In terms of its conversation with Government, does ICTU have a position, not just on ending homelessness on which I think there is universal agreement, but on affordable housing, which is a key starter fact for a lot of young people who are working and who, with loan support and access to credit, would be able to take it up? It just seems to have fallen out of the picture almost completely.

Will the delegation tell us more about what effectively is a strike by developers and builders when it comes to building housing? Perhaps Dr. McDonnell has a view on that. The number of housing starts is appallingly small. Do the witnesses have an idea for a mechanism to solve the problem? There will be a minimum additional inflow or availability of capital funds of an extra €2.5 billion in terms of the review. Does congress have ideas about what would be best value in terms of that additionality?