Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State for his reply and look forward to the data. I was hoping the Minister of State might be able to tell me about proposed new schemes but they may be announced in the budget next week. We need new schemes and businesses need new forms of help.

The Minister of State said FÁS is under his Department and that training is provided to businesses and business managers. Word went out from regional managers yesterday that there will be no additional funds this year for FÁS training for businesses. Can this be confirmed? The training providers are very annoyed and small businesses contacted me yesterday on this matter. If it is true that there are to be no additional funds, it is disgraceful. The managers are being told they can only spend on their training programmes money that was committed last year. That seems to be very serious. Will the Minister of State comment on this today or revert to me at another time?

Businesses are under immense pressure. Enterprise boards received additional funds, which I accept, but they need more. They have now been told that there could be a delay in receiving the funds and that they may have to seek approval from the Department of Finance if they approve a project at board level.

How many grants have been paid? There are unnecessary delays in making such payments to businesses. I urge the Minister of State not to support the requirement that every small capital grant for employment will have to be signed off by the Department of Finance. We need fast decisions and money to be made available quickly. I had hoped the Minister of State would speak about making available more grant money for businesses to employ people. This involves a cross-over with social welfare. If a business needs a person for one or two weeks' work, much red tape and paperwork is involved in taking people off the dole, putting them to work and putting them back on the dole again. Can the Minister of State invent a scheme to facilitate a business which wants to employ people for a number of weeks but cannot guarantee them full-time work which will make it simpler to take people off social welfare, provide them with work and let them go back on social welfare? It is wrong when there is work to be done that people cannot do it because it is too awkward and involves too much red tape or that they lose out. Can a new scheme be introduced to straighten this out?

It is a very serious matter if FÁS has no money for training. The Minister of State will probably tell me that training is going to unemployed people but businesses still need training and so do managers. On numerous occasions here I have stated that they need professional help and advice and business coaching to get their businesses through these tough times. Do not pull this plug on small businesses.

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