Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

Deputy O'Connor would make a good Minister for social reconstruction. It is very important that we recognise that, by ignoring the circumstances I have described, there is a price to be paid. It may be a much bigger price than we anticipate.

Let me refer to the transfer to FÁS. Some people see this in different ways. I am of the view that it could be a good development, provided it improves - by way of the provision of training, the creation of job opportunities and the administration of local schemes - the quality and level of services available to communities.

In recent times, a notion has developed that everyone wants to become unemployed because the rates relating to jobseeker's benefit and allowance are high. That is utter rubbish. Nobody deliberately becomes unemployed. Families enjoy a greater level of satisfaction when the adults in the home are in employment. The difficulty is that many individuals can no longer obtain employment. There have been many statements to the effect that people should go out and get jobs. Of course they should do so, and it would be great if everyone had a job. Unfortunately, however, the current economic situation, which has been developing for the past three years or more, provides no encouragement in this regard. In light of current events, it does not appear that people's prospects will be all that great in the near future.

A person will always try to obtain employment if he or she can do so. If, however, someone has a mortgage to pay, he or she will be given some degree of support to pay it but if he or she is working in low-paid employment, this will not be the case. The reality is that this is what we have inherited from the good times to which the Minister referred earlier.

The Minister made reference to the partial capacity scheme. This scheme may be a good development or it may be a bad one. As a former Minister of State in the then Department of Social Welfare-----

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