Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

I thought that when the Minister of State was appointed to the two Departments that his primary responsibility would be to cement the bridge between the Departments of Education and Science and Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Part of the task at this moment of crisis is to capture as many resources as possible for the control of the education system. FÁS simply cannot do this job, and I have been there. Anybody in FÁS who is telling the Minister of State otherwise is telling the same kind of stories we got from FÁS which led to recent upheavals in that organisation.

There is under-capacity in the institutes of technology for courses which people recently unemployed want to attend. They do not want to go on a back to work course but want to upskill their IT skills in places of education like the institutes of technology. The fact the institutes of technology are free to bid means they are closed out. That is Civil Service speak for saying they did not win the contract.

The Minister of State should assign half the 51,0000 places to the education sector without subcontracting and half to FÁS and let them compete with each other. Let us see what the market says and to which the unemployed people sign up. I wager that they will go to the institutes of technology long before they go to——

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