Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

When Henry Ford introduced the Model T, somebody asked him what colours would be available. He replied: "You can have any colour you like as long as it's black." I am afraid, for the 60,000 young people who will come onto the labour market every year and will not be able to get a job, the option at present seems to be the basic jobseeker's benefit because there will not be enough training places available. The ways and means by which places are to be made available are not seriously being updated or reformed in line with current needs.

I support all the speakers who raised concerns about FÁS being handed the entire responsibility for retraining, and I would like to hear the Minister's response. To begin with, FÁS has no business being involved in CE schemes. These schemes would be better in a properly resourced Department of Social and Family Affairs, so that people with a range of skills would avail of a CE scheme in order to learn, train and work. The very least we need to be able to do for young people is to tell them that at the end of this CE scheme, whatever amount of money the person gets, they will get work of value and the person will be able to look back and say: "I did something useful while I was on that scheme and it has stood me in good stead for whenever an opportunity for a proper career occurs." It does not seem there is any emphasis on this at present.

The amount of extra provision being made is 26,000 places to bring the number up to a total of 180,000, if we are to believe the amount of people who would come in under the net as per this section. I believe it will probably be a third of that. That is not adequate training for the entire population of unemployed people.

With regard to protecting and stimulating jobs, a national retrofit programme has been announced. Will there be any cooperation with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and others in providing programmes to retrain people to roll that out? It has major potential.

FÁS must be re-evaluated, and perhaps even scrapped and something new put in its place that will be effective and credible. Members have mentioned some of the industries that have been lost, such as the sugar beet industry. If even two plants were still in place they could have been used to form a renewable energy core for rural industry. That would have helped with our carbon footprint and kept people in work, but it was let go on a whim by the former Minister for Agriculture and Food, Deputy Mary Coughlan.

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