Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I am taking this Adjournment matter on behalf of my colleague, the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Coghlan.

I am aware of the redundancies last year and this year at the Alienware company which is located in Athlone. I understand that this company, which is an Irish limited company, is a subsidiary of the Dell Corporation, as Deputy O'Rourke has pointed out. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation received notification from Alienware on 1 April 2009 of an impending 57 redundancies at its plant in Athlone over an 18-month period.

It was clear from the notification and from subsequent inquiries made by officials of the Department at the time that, although linked to the Dell Corporation, the redundancies at Alienware were not directly linked to the 1,900 redundancies announced by Dell at its computer manufacturing facility in Raheen, County Limerick in January 2009. The subsequent application for European Union co-financing assistance made by Ireland under the European globalisation adjustment fund, EGF, was made specifically in regard to the Raheen redundancies.

Alienware is a distinct company and its business activity is in an area completely separate from that of the type of computer manufacture carried out at the Raheen plant. I understand that Alienware is involved in high-end computer gaming machines and systems. The rationale for the redundancies, as notified to the Department in April 2009 by the management, was one of infrastructural change to support the company's expansion and the streamlining of its operations by reducing costs to improve business efficiencies.

Strict criteria apply to the making of applications for co-financing assistance under the EGF regulation. The fund can provide supports where redundancies in a European Union member state result from trade related reasons. These reasons include delocalisation of production outside the European Union, a substantial increase of imports into the European Union or the rapid decline of the European Union share of the global market for a given sector. The EGF does not, however, provide supports in the case of a company restructuring or rationalisation such as that in the Alienware situation.

Applications must encompass a minimum number of 500 redundancies occurring within a four-month period in the case of a single enterprise fund. It is understood that Alienware was proposing up to 57 redundancies in a timeframe between April 2009 and October 2010. These criteria clearly militated against any application being pertinent to the case of the redundancies occurring at Alienware. Additional redundancies within the Dell company in other Irish locations have occurred since the redundancies at the Raheen plant which also were not eligible for EGF support.

Beyond the prescribed limits of EGF support, the Government continues to provide a wide and varied range of supports in terms of guidance, job search, upskilling, retraining, enterprise supports and educational opportunities for all redundant persons. These supports are delivered through the services of State agencies such as FÁS, the vocational education committees, Enterprise Ireland, the city and county enterprise boards and various educational institutions. The Government remains fully committed to upskilling the unemployed in order that they are successful in getting back into employment.

We are investing substantial resources in tackling our unemployment problem. This year more than €1 billion will be invested in the provision of a range of labour force measures. We are focusing our resources on a number of key cohorts of the unemployed which include the lower skilled, the long-term unemployed, those under 35 years of age, and those formerly employed in the manufacturing, construction and retail sectors. These cohorts have been prioritised as they are most likely to drift into very long-term unemployment.

In 2009 FÁS employment services, together with the local employment services, doubled their capacity. This means that the annual referral capacity under the national employment action plan rose from 78,000 persons in 2008 to 147,000 persons last year. The additional resources allocated by the Government to tackling the rising unemployment rate have also enabled the significant expansion of activation, training and work experience places. This year the total number of training and work experience activation places will be approximately 147,000 compared with the 66,000 places that were delivered in 2008 and the 130,000 places delivered last year. The bulk of this additional provision has been due to the increase in training places on short courses for the unemployed. FÁS now provides modular based training in order that participants can pick which modules they most require to improve their skills and increase their employability while maintaining a close link to the labour market.

Training courses are being delivered in innovative formats such as on-line, blended learning and night courses. In this way we are providing a range of delivery methods in addition to the traditional classroom approach, which enables more people access the services of FÁS. In addition to the places mentioned, Skillnets and FÁS will provide this year almost 10,400 training places for the unemployed or those on short-time working. Owing to the economic downturn, many individuals work for two or three days each week and receive social welfare payments for the days they do not work. Skillnets and FÁS provide training opportunities for these people. Individuals participating in these programmes can avail of training for the days they do not work while retaining their social welfare entitlements, subject to the normal social welfare rules applying. This means these individuals are able to use their reduced working week as an opportunity to upskill, thereby improving their employability.

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