Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The national action programme on racism will be launched tomorrow. It is a plan for the future on which work has been done for some considerable time. The fourth periodic report of the National Economic and Social Forum was published in November. It reviews the work published by the forum and covers a number of issues, including lone parents, the reintegration of prisoners, equality issues, early school leavers and equity of access to hospital care. It notes the progress made in these areas and welcomes the establishment of the new institutions. It goes on to state that it will continue to work on some other aspects. I do not have all the details but it is continuing work in the social exclusion area.

On the forum on the workplace of the future, work on that has gone on for the past 18 months or so. The mid-term review of part two of Sustaining Progress commits the NCPP to find practical approaches to further develop workplace partnerships with particular regard to the contribution of enterprise partnership to workplace learning. The centre is working on the finalisation of agreed guidelines and different forms of employee financial involvement. That work is carried out by IBEC and ICTU and is expected to conclude this year. The NCPP continues to research case studies in other sectors and all the studies are available on the centre's website. The NCPP continues work in other areas such as a case study on current practice regarding the EU directive on information and consultation and different step-by-step procedures on that directive. The centre is also developing a second phase involving seminars on employer and trade union issues and initiatives in an entire range of areas. Overall, therefore, the NCPP has a major work programme, with elements either under way or in progress.

I wish to mention two other projects. The learning organisation project, developed in conjunction with FÁS, entails using a partnership approach for training and organisation learning to ensure that employers and employees develop the skills necessary for future success. This project is ongoing in 14 private and public sector workplaces. Finally, the joint partnership training modules project is an ICTU-IBEC initiative which involves the NCPP working with a number of companies to implement the associated training modules. All these programmes are either ongoing or form part of the work programme for the current year.

See this speech in context