Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Minister for her reply. However, what she said has made me even more dubious about this section. The fact that there is a surplus in a training fund when almost 500,000 people are unemployed is not acceptable. We are three years into a recession and there should not be a surplus at this stage. The funding in question should have immediately been pumped into retraining and educational opportunities to ensure that the lowest paid and those who are on social welfare could have upskilled in order to avail of any existing job opportunities. I presume the Minister is responsible for the training fund and I urge her to ensure that the money it contains will be spent as a matter of urgency.

There is no point in leaving €100 million sitting in an account while we await some future economic upturn. There are thousands of apprentices who should be given the opportunity to complete their training. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed people who do not have the skills required to allow them to avail of certain job opportunities. The people at which section 23 is supposedly aimed, namely, those who are in low-paid jobs and who depend on the minimum wage, would love the opportunity to upskill to a major degree.

I presume that is what the training levy was set up for in the first instance. It will now lose €7 million because of this change. That is not a big sum in the grand scheme of things but the €7 million could have ensured a greater enhancement of the job seeker's allowance than the €20 that Tús applicants will get or the €50 for participants in the internship scheme. Other schemes have had their training budgets cut in the past. Funding for the community employment programme has been cut. There is a crying need to extend the CE programme. Here is a fund sitting waiting to be called on but it is being reduced by €7 million this year. Given that only six months remain of this year, I presume it will be reduced by €14 million next year and subsequent years.

Training opportunities are being lost. I do not see the logic of this measure. I understand the logic of making a counter measure between the PRSI changes and the increase in the national minimum wage, although I do not agree with it. We have had that debate. Given the size of this, I do not understand why it has been included. As a rule I am opposed to levies. I believe we should do everything through taxation. However, as it exists we should use the money and not reduce it, given the scale of the current crisis.

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