Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Minister for his reply, although most of the information it contained is already known to us. I accept his point that efforts are being made to enhance ongoing activity in upskilling workers and enhancing educational output. Given the outflow of manufacturing jobs in particular, however, my request is that the Minister initiate an assessment by sector and geographical region to identify and target those that are most vulnerable. Targeted upskilling of workers in these sectors should then be provided. A fruitful exercise to begin this initiative would be to talk to some of the companies involved. Such an approach might yield a significant amount of information.

We must act in the face of various announcements of redundancies, the selling off of jobs or whatever it is called. We should at least be grateful that we are on the other side of the task force phase where numerous groups talked a lot but did nothing. Action must now be taken. The economy is doing well but there remains a continuous flow of jobs leaving the economy. Each of these job losses has a major impact, particularly in rural areas. The consequences are huge not only for the worker but for his or her family and community. An initiative such as I have outlined would mitigate the impact of such losses.

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