Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

I move:

"That Dáil Éireann:

notes with particular concern, the huge growth in unemployment reflected in:

the regular announcement of job losses, particularly in the manufacturing industry;

the increase of almost 80,000 over the past 12 months in the actual and seasonally adjusted numbers on the live register;

the doubling of numbers signing on at some social welfare offices since the general election; and

the warning from FÁS that up to 65,400 construction workers may lose their jobs by the end of 2009;

expresses its serious concern at the social and economic impact of any return to structural long term unemployment for large numbers of people;

deplores the failure of the Government to take any new initiatives to protect existing jobs or promote the provision of new employment or facilitate retraining or educational opportunities for those who have lost their jobs; and

calls on the Government to launch a major programme to counter the huge increase in unemployment that would have as its key elements:

a major school building programme to take up to 40,000 children out of prefabs and to provide alternative employment for those who have lost their jobs as a result of the downturn in construction;

a national insulation scheme to provide energy efficient homes and contribute to the lowering of carbon emissions that would also provide alternative employment for building workers;

a substantial programme of investment in skills and retraining, including a greater role for the institutes of technology in this area and an increase in the number of places available under the vocational training opportunities scheme (currently capped at 5,000) and the use of vacant places in universities and colleges;

a strengthening of the role of the county enterprise boards and, in particular, the removal of the limitation on the type of enterprises the boards can support and raising the limit on the number of jobs they can create above the current figure of ten, as well as a significant increase in Measure 1 funding to allow the boards to achieve their full potential;

a reduction in the lead-in time for eligibility for the back to education allowance;

an improvement in access of community employment and jobs initiative schemes; and

access to a local employment service for every unemployed person."

I wish to share time with Deputies Joan Burton and Arthur Morgan.

My Labour Party colleagues and I note with concern the considerable growth in unemployment. Our motion sets out the current situation, encompassing the hardship that confronts so many of our constituents, their families and individuals across the country. We advocate a number of new and novel solutions and ask the Government to take note of them because we put them forward in a constructive way. I emphasise that. They should be pursued vigorously to address the problems outlined in the motion.

Judging from its amendment, this Government has learned nothing. It offers no new initiative but purveys old solutions dressed up and labelled in new bottles. That is no way to address our current economic problems which present us with unemployment figures of over 240,000. Colleagues will note that this number would fill Croke Park three times over on All-Ireland day, at full capacity. That is the dimension of the problem that confronts us.

The apathy and complacency of the Government have undermined and embellished every proposal we have brought to the House. This reinforces the public sense that there is a deeply embedded apathy and possibly an inability at the core of Government concerning how to confront these issues. Government has had it so good for so long that its members do not know they are complacent and apathetic. It is time that this Government addressed the problem in a strong and vigorous way, bringing forward new and innovative ideas. Today my party leader asked the Taoiseach about this issue and received the usual bland reply. The Taoiseach says he is bringing forward a budget six weeks early but that is no way to address a problem. It is merely window dressing.

As we discuss this motion, the world economy is entering the greatest crisis it has faced since the Great Depression. For several years perceptive economists who are independent of business, as is my accountant colleague, Deputy Joan Burton, have predicted the current crisis and have suggested ways of mitigating its effects. They have been ignored by Governments, including our own, who prefer to listen to economists employed as cheerleaders by banks. Those ones tried to persuade us the boom would last forever.

Like other small open economies Ireland is particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of the world economy. However, some decisions taken by the present Government and its predecessors, now entering a 12th year in power, have increased rather than reduced our vulnerability. It was clear the export-led boom generated by inward investment was coming to an end by 2002 and that from then on we were becoming more and more dependent on construction. There is an old saying that people do not grow rich by taking in one another's washing. It is also true that building and selling houses to one another is not a sustainable basis for economic growth. That is as true as the nose on one's face.

It was also clear by the late 1990s that the construction industry no longer needed the plethora of incentives put in place to encourage activity in the 1980s. Instead of getting rid of these schemes, however, more were added. As Minister for Finance, the Taoiseach finally got around to scrapping these schemes last year, just as construction was beginning to decline. We now have a glut of often poorly constructed houses and apartments in areas not served with public transport and without services, sometimes even without footpaths. At the same time there are 40,000 people on local authority waiting lists. We saw the cancellation of vital urban renewal schemes such as St. Michael's Mansions and O'Devanney Gardens. Private developers withdrew from the public private partnerships which the Government believed to be the solution to all public expenditure problems. My colleagues, Deputies Michael D. Higgins and Joan Burton, have been to the forefront in exposing this myth.

As one of the most open economies in the world, Ireland's prosperity depends on producing and selling goods and services for export at competitive prices. While we have continued to attract inward investment over the past five years in high-tech industries we have lost thousands of jobs in lower skilled manufacturing and many of the workers who lost those jobs are being consigned to long-term unemployment. Our major concern is that this country will revert to having institutionalised or structural unemployment, thereby aping what happened here in the 1980s. In the first eight months of this year over 23,500 people were made redundant, a 36% increase on the same period in 2007. Many of their jobs were in manufacturing, some of it relatively high-tech.

The Government has tried to gloss over the level of redundancies and boasts of its job creation record but we must examine the kinds of jobs that have been created. We have doubled our workforce over the past 20 years but the Government does not care to admit how many of the jobs created are in low-skilled work. Approximately one tenth of the labour force, 200,000 workers, now earn less than €10 per hour. With bankers and their incomes in the news at the moment we might reflect on the fact that some top bank executives receive €1,500 per hour while 1 million people earn less than €15.50 per hour. That is the dimension of the situation and it is what ordinary people in the streets are asking about now. The majority of those who take up these low-paid jobs have lower secondary education, or less. Deputy Burton has been a strong advocate in this area. It is a shocking failure of our educational training system that at the height of the boom we had to rely on immigrant skilled labour to fill so many jobs when so many of our young people were leaving the school system without educational qualifications or skills.

FÁS has warned that up to 65,400 construction workers may lose their jobs by the end of 2009. I would like to hear some proposals from FÁS on how it will provide these redundant workers with new skills. I am disappointed that FÁS has not been very effective in retraining workers who are made redundant. In some cases, indeed, a FÁS training course does not seem to greatly enhance employment prospects. In addition to auditing the financial controls of that organisation the Government should examine some recent decisions of FÁS which were probably prompted by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. There was, for example, a crazy decision to reduce the pension budget by €10 million this year and by an additional €27 million next year. We must look at these decisions of Government.

There is a jobs club in Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary which works as a committee. However, FÁS states that jobs clubs are failing to provide participants for courses when in fact it is the responsibility of FÁS to do this. This is in that organisation's contract, referred to in the agreement. The jobs club in Carrick-on-Suir was proposed for closure in January 2008. How can the Government agree to the closure of a jobs club in an area where local unemployment increased by 30%, from 972 in January 2008 to 1,319 in August 2008? That is an increase of 44% signing on between August 2007 and August 2008. The downward trend in the national economic cycle is hitting Carrick-on-Suir disproportionately, as seen in current figures from the Central Statistics Office. A jobs club is now more essential than ever in order to contain rising unemployment. It gives hope and inspiration to many who have nobody else to turn to and enjoys a high profile in the area. All major building activity in that area has ceased and many young people in the 18-30 age group have had to emigrate to avoid a bleak future.

I ask the Minister of State to intervene with FÁS and ensure this jobs club is not closed. That would be another retrograde step. At the very time when such clubs are needed, FÁS declares they should be closed. I have opposed that. The Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment met representatives from the club and they received all-party support. They had a meeting with the Minister of State at the Department for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Kelleher, and as a result the evil day has been postponed. We will pursue this matter and we want more radical innovative solutions from FÁS. We do not want lame old solutions such as the closure of places that are of immense importance at this point in the economic cycle.

We must adopt a more proactive training programme for redundant workers and for new entrants to the labour force. The cap on the VTOS scheme must be lifted at once and institutes of technology must be given further resources to enable them increase the number of places they provide. Because of declining numbers of school leavers some of the ITs will have spare capacity which could be used for training and retraining workers.

The time which must elapse before an unemployed person is entitled to the back to education allowance should be shortened or eliminated. The Minister states this allowance is awarded if a worker gets statutory redundancy but what about those who do not receive statutory redundancy, who are simply laid off? We should encourage people to return to education and not have any limitation on the scheme. The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Coughlan, is not here because she knows well that she was the person who introduced these restrictions on eligibility and the conditions for participation.

She had a part in the savage 16 cuts, of which this was one.

See this speech in context