Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I will respond to Deputy Joan Collins's points first. The person who applies for and accepts an internship will get an internship for a six-month or nine-month period. While on the internship, the person will retain existing entitlements to jobseeker's payments. My Department will pay an additional €50 per week for the duration of the internship. The issue of three days does not apply because the intern is receiving the social welfare jobseeker's entitlement as well as receiving an additional sum from my Department. That is the core of this initiative. I advocated this initiative in opposition for three years.

Before I was a Dáil Deputy I worked in the Dublin Institute of Technology. A huge number of people emerge from education and training, having finished an apprenticeship, a degree or a masters, and the critical issue that faces them in this critical time of unemployment is that if they become unemployed they cannot get jobs because they do not have experience. They cannot get experience because they do not have jobs. They are in a catch-22. I am sure Deputy Joan Collins knows some fine young people who finished apprenticeships, degrees or masters but cannot make the transition to working and getting valuable work experience on their CVs. They cannot get their foot in the door of employment because they have no work experience. Would I prefer there were thousands of jobs available for these young people? Of course I would but they are not there at the moment.

Internships work particularly well in countries such as the United States and Germany. Deputy Joe Higgins was in the Chamber earlier and I am sure he is familiar with the situation in the European Parliament, Belgium and other European countries. Stagières gain extremely valuable work experience in stages that are often their passports to jobs. I have been working intensively on this, particularly with employers, with a view to private sector employers offering serious, high quality internships to those who have qualifications but lack work experience. It is important that as many employers as possible offer internship opportunities to as many people as possible so they can get a permanent job.

Deputy Collins should remember that the recession will end one day. Just as bubbles collapse, recessions end and when the recession ends - hopefully sooner rather than later - we do not want a series of people who have gone through various forms of education and training but were never able to get work experience. Their competitors will be new people finishing apprenticeships and degrees and those who were unable to be employed will be at a serious disadvantage when this dreadful recession comes to an end.

I understand and accept Deputy Collins is concerned that people should not be abused. A national steering committee is under the chairmanship of Mr. Martin Murphy, the managing director of Hewlett-Packard, and includes Mr. Seán O'Driscoll, the managing director of Glen Dimplex, and a number of other people from firms and industries. We also have indications of interest from IBEC, whose members profess an interest and which has been running internship schemes for a number of years. There is also interest from chambers of commerce. We want the uptake to be strong. The National Youth Council of Ireland has a representative on the steering committee and there is also a stakeholders group, including those interested in employment from the trade union or employer side, to ensure the issues arising from potential abuse are addressed.

This is not employment because it is an internship. It is intended to be valuable work experience for someone who cannot otherwise get that experience. It is intended to be something that can be listed on a CV when people look for employment. The level of interest from applicants and employers interested in hosting internships means I am hopeful we can roll out a significant number of quality internships.

Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh referred to specifications and sets out a number of them in his amendment. The model developed is that the host organisation specifies what the internship is about and the career development of the person who comes in as an intern, meaning what the person will get from the internship. The intern will make a commitment to working at the internship and developing experience. There will be a reporting mechanism through the national employment and entitlement service. The employment services side of FÁS is joining the Department of Social Protection. This will be the first scheme operated by the new national employment and entitlement service. It will bring together units in the Department. We met at 7.15 a.m. I apologise to Deputies for leaving earlier. We meet every Wednesday from 7.15 a.m to 9.30 a.m to go through the details mentioned by Deputy Collins. It would be a concern if people were abused rather than getting a valuable experience, which is what this is about.

This scheme is available to the private sector, which we hope will take a strong interest in it, the public sector and the community and voluntary sector. Much interest has been expressed by these sectors. If the internship involves a connection with children or vulnerable or older people in the community and voluntary sector, the interns must undergo Garda vetting. This takes a period of time but there have been meetings with representatives from the Garda vetting unit to see how we can ensure delays are kept to a minimum. The scheme will be launched at the end of this month and will go live on the website on 1 July. After the initial launch in Dublin, we will roll out the scheme over the remainder of the year to Cork, Galway and Waterford. There is much positive interest in this. A significant number of people, including the civil servants in my Department and people who have been working in FÁS and are coming into the Department, have put much positive work into it. By the time of the launch I will be in a position to give Deputies details of the scheme.

There is a restriction on numbers to ensure that the kind of abuses which both Deputies were concerned about do not take place. If an employment has between one and ten employees, it can host one intern; if it has 11 to 20 employees, it can host two interns; and where there are 30 or more employees, it can host up to 20% as interns to a maximum of 200. If anybody here has employed an intern in their business or had interns working with them, he or she knows there must be a very clear plan of what the intern should do and experience. Time and effort must be put into organising an internship but in the long run it is very valuable and rewarding.

For example, in media industries in Ireland there has been a significant development of internships in recent years, with many of the interns receiving relatively little pay. Nevertheless, it is the way to break into the media. In the case of these internships people will receive jobseeker's benefits and an additional top-up of up to €50 per week.

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