Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

This Bill puts the cart before the horse. It threatens welfare cuts at a time when sufficient education, training, child care and job opportunities simply do not exist, either for the 361,000 claimants affected by this Bill, or for the almost half a million on the dole as a whole. This Bill is mean spirited, nasty and counterproductive. Nobody can have a problem in principle with activation policies moving people from social welfare to paid employment. The vast majority of those dependent on social welfare would prefer to be in paid employment, paying their way in society and having an income that could contribute to enhancing their lives and their children's lives. Regrettably, the Minister's approach in this Bill is not activation, but compulsion. It is penal. It is all stick and no carrot, because there are no jobs, there are too few educational courses and fewer still training opportunities. Of course, there is always an Bád Bán, the Government's safety valve for decades, namely, emigration. The Minister is confirming the message of the Minister for Finance in last year's budget when he cut young adults' jobseeker's allowance. He basically said to them, "Young people of Ireland, you know where the boat is. Get lost."

The intention of this Bill is to punish the unemployed, those on jobseeker's allowance and the supplementary welfare allowance. The Minister intends to punish them, mainly young people, many of them with families, for his Government's failure to create jobs. They will be punished for refusing to take up non-existent jobs or courses. Is the Minister telling us that all these courses, training opportunities and jobs will be in place by the time this Bill is passed? There is not a hope in hell that half a million job opportunities, courses or training places will be created by July when he intends to have this Bill rammed through the Dáil.

We will have a repeat of the AnCO glory days when courses were set up by the Government to massage the unemployment figures. These courses required the long-term unemployed, including many graduates, to sit in classrooms pretending to learn telephone skills with bananas because they did not have enough telephones. They had to sit there for hours on end twiddling their thumbs because there was no purpose to the course. The reward for such suffering was to languish on the dole, because the jobs were not there in the 1980s, just like today. Not only is this Bill ill conceived and puts the cart before the horse; it is also a fraud. It is about cutting costs and not about getting people back to work. The jobs are not there.

I do not know whether the Minister has noticed that the Government has fucked up the economy; he should look around him. The Government has gambled away the jobs and used the money needed to create new jobs to bail out the banks, its developer cronies and Greek shipping magnates. From the Government's point of view, somebody had to foot the Bill, and it was not going to be its friends. That is what this Social Welfare Bill is really about. It is about picking the pockets of the poor to give to the rich in order to repay their gambling debts.

What is the definition of a 'suitable' job offer? It is not defined in this Bill and it is another discretionary power for social welfare inspectors. What constitutes an education and training offer? These are important questions, as they could be the difference between life and death, the difference between being on the bread line and under it. Living in poverty is a daunting prospect and a daunting reality already for many in Irish society today, yet the Minister is looking to condemn more to that reality with this Bill.

What about the minimum wage? Can the Minister guarantee that there will be no reduction in the national minimum wage? I doubt it, because the indication to date is that this is the next target for cuts.

With this Bill, the Government is putting on its shoes before it puts on its socks. Getting people back to work will not happen as a result of unfair cuts to the jobseeker's allowance. It will happen when there is meaningful and appropriate training, education or work placements for everyone within three months of becoming unemployed. It will happen with the creation of jobs. There is a gaping hole where appropriate education and training opportunities should be. We are now over two years into an unprecedented economic crisis and this Government cannot even come up with a proper jobs creation strategy. Such ineptness deserves to be punished, and hopefully it will be. Roll on the election.

What about the Government's much hyped work placement programme? It is not delivering with less than half of its minuscule 2,000 places filled. Of the 2,500 college places supposedly created for jobseekers in the budget of April 2009, 35% remain unfilled because the supports are not there. These are the activation measures that are required. I urge him to talk to the Minister for Education and Skills about those places and the need to increase that number.

The Government's logic of penny pinching has been exposed by its decision on the sly to cut the job retention fund , known as the enterprise stabilisation fund, by €22 million last month. That fund was established to support viable but vulnerable export companies and to keep people in employment.

What about those half way through their apprenticeship? The 3,000 apprentices who were within six to 12 months of completing their apprenticeships and who now have no work placement, and the 5,000 former apprentices who were made redundant must be facilitated and supported to complete their courses. The public and private sector must be incentivised to take them on. ESB Networks has shown the way by agreeing to take on 400. Much more needs to be done to help apprentices who have suffered because of the downturn.

Os rud é go bhfuil an Bille seo á bhrú tríd ag an Aire sa tslí atá molta aige ag an am seo, is léir nach bhfeiceann sé ní hamháin gur cur amú ama agus fuinnimh dóibh siúd atá dífhostaithe cursaí atá mí-oiriúnach dóibh, ach is cur amú airgead cáiníocóirí na tíre seo é chomh maith, nach cuideoidh in aon chor leis an ghéilleagar. Is iad atá de dhíth ná cúrsaí traenála agus oideachasúla oiriúnacha atá dírithe ar postanna, nó a chuideoidh le postanna a fháil. Tá gá le réamhsmaoineamh chun é sin a dhéanamh - áfach, tá fíorbheagán de sin le fheiceáil go dtí seo ón Rialtas. Where is the jobs strategy? What are the future job opportunities which will be available? What are the companies which will be attracted to Ireland in the future? What indigenous goods and services will characterise the future Irish economy? What are the skills that economy will require? A recent FÁS report found that many of its courses have lost focus and are of little use to young people in terms of getting work. I urge the Minister to read our document, Getting Ireland Back to Work -Time for Action, Jobs Creation and Retention. It is time for this issue to be dealt with.

I have run out of time. There is much that I would like to say on changes with regard to lone parents and I will address them on Committee Stage. That is another absolutely disgraceful stance to take at this time. The preparatory work has not been done to ensure these activation measures, as they are called, will not have a detrimental effect on those surviving on either the lone-parent scheme or social welfare allowances.

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