Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

The Government's response to the growing unemployment problem has been complacent and in many ways clueless. Since the Government was returned to power an extra 86,000 people are now signing on the live register. The steady stream of job losses has touched every corner of the country and every sector of employment. The number of people signing on has doubled, or almost doubled, in a number of different places around the country, such as Castleblayney, Portarlington, Portlaoise and Macroom. In large centres of population such as Cork city, the live register is up by 4,500 and by 2,500 in Waterford city, 3,000 in Limerick city, nearly 2,000 in Clondalkin and 1,800 in Blanchardstown and Mulhuddart, to name but a few. It is against that type of background that the Labour Party has brought this motion to the House.

For all that is stark about the present situation, there is plenty of action the Government could and should take to turn the situation around, and that is what I want to address. The Government needs to take a three-pronged approach to the growing problem of unemployment. First, it needs to ensure the income of every unemployed person provides him or her with security and adequate protection against poverty and indebtedness. Second, it must immediately identify and provide for the training and education needs of all who have joined the live register. Third, it needs to focus on creating new job opportunities so people can return to work as soon as possible. It is critical that the Government focuses on ensuring that those who are losing their jobs do not become the long-term unemployed of the future. As regards income, the Government must first come to terms with the realities of being unemployed. It is not the same as it was in the 1980s. If someone becomes unemployed today, he or she is much more likely to be struggling with mortgage repayments, credit card debt and higher purchase agreements and to incur arrears in rental and utility bills. Recent statistics from MABS show there has been a 50% increase in the average level of debt among its clients since last year, and of course the number of clients is up by a third. That means the Government must prioritise income adequacy in next week's budget and safeguard welfare payments. In particular, the rules on mortgage interest supplement must be relaxed to reflect the realities of people living with high mortgages when they lose their employment.

The second course of action must focus on education and training. As a first step we need to obtain far greater information as regards the education and training needs of those on the live register. There is a dearth of up to date information on education qualifications, skills deficits, language competency, nationality and so on. For some on the live register, upskilling may mean completing a basic English or literacy course. For others, such as construction workers, it could mean complete reskilling for a different area of employment or other types of work within a particular sector. The Government should be instructing FÁS to gear up to meet the increased demand for its services and it needs to produce a much speedier response. In addition, FÁS must examine the level of spare capacity that may exist in universities, as Deputy Tuffy has said, and in the institutes of technology and determine how those places might be matched to the needs of the unemployed.

Government should increase the number of places on community employment and jobs initiative schemes, and it should relax the eligibility criteria for those schemes to make certain that new people joining the live register have the opportunity to ensure quickly they remain active and gain alternative work experience. It should develop detailed information packs also for the new unemployed on issues as regards redundancy, training, education and welfare supports, because there is a real gap. More than anything, there is a need to overhaul the rules on the back to education and the back to work enterprise allowances. It makes no sense whatsoever that someone has to wait 12 months to become eligible for a back to education allowance or up to two years for the back to work enterprise allowance. Recent changes in relation to entitlement for people who have received statutory redundancy, while welcome, are not enough as thousands have had to sign on in recent times without receiving statutory redundancy payments at all. It should be possible for an unemployed person to avail of these schemes if he or she has not been able to find alternative employment within, say, a three month period. It serves no one's interest to wait until we have a serious long-term unemployment problem before these types of departmental supports become available.

The third strand of Government action must revolve around the creation of employment opportunities. The Government could put many of the jobless construction workers back to work, for example, by restarting and expanding the schools building programme and by investing in a national insulation programme. There is a crying need, especially among older residents, for homes to be upgraded in respect of insulation. It would be a win-win situation for all if the Government embarked on such a programme.

The Government also needs to strengthen early warning systems for imminent job losses and put together a crack team of business, finance and human resource experts to assist small and medium companies to downsize instead of going out of business altogether. We need to look at ways family friendly measures might reduce the numbers of unemployed while also facilitating young parents. Finally, there must be guaranteed access to local employment services for all of those who find themselves on the live register. The Government has lost too much time talking about soft landings. The hard truth is that we have a serious unemployment problem again on our hands and it is time the Government faced up to that.

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