John Lyons (Dublin North West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to speak on the Education and Training Boards Bill 2012. I was part of this area when I was a member of the Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection. Although I have since moved to the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, the work of this committee is intrinsically linked to the content of the Education and Training Boards Bill.

I will speak on two aspects of the Bill, which are the reform agenda of the Department of Education and Skills and the importance of further education and training for the large number of people who are currently unemployed. The Bill is one more in a series of steps being taken by the Department of Education and Skills. The policies of the Department are being spring cleaned. Officials are looking at best practice and at what must be done to make ourselves fit for purpose for the future.

The Minister said the Bill is about enhancing learning. I totally agree with that. I also commend the Minister on the other reforms that have taken place. Hopefully, some people outside the House, as well as some of the Deputies, are watching what is happening here today because this is real reform. We should stop what we are doing for ten seconds and try to understand what reform means and what reforms are happening through the legislative process in this new Bill. Radical changes are happening to our education system because of this. I will speak about a couple of them which are quite good.

Unfortunately, I will not be present when the junior certificate is due to be discussed in the Dáil. As a secondary school teacher, I would love to speak on it. The change is warmly welcome and overdue, and I am delighted the Minister is doing something about it. SOLAS is also due to be established. This will work in tandem with the education and training boards. It is a little like a jigsaw puzzle. This Bill is just one part of a jigsaw that will overhaul how education is delivered in Ireland at all levels, which will ultimately affect the individual and their employability.

It is 70 years since the Beveridge report was produced in the United Kingdom. Those familiar with the report will know that it was the origin of the National Health Service, NHS, which is similar to what we are trying to introduce here with the universal health insurance scheme. Seventy years ago, in 1942, the Second World War was ongoing, so in challenging times, when things are difficult, good decisions can be made. The Education and Training Boards Bill is being introduced during a challenging time but we will see its fruit in time.

I am familiar with the heads of the Bill. The Minister did something quite new in that regard. The committee saw the heads of the Bill and was able to discuss them before the Bill was brought to the floor of the House. It was a great privilege to be part of composing more than the heads of the Bill. Obviously a number of people from the VECs and other sectors appeared before the committee to discuss their concerns about the direction the Bill should take. From my perspective, the most important part of the Bill deals with the provision of education and training. It needs to meet the challenges of the workplace today. I am very concerned about that. I realise SOLAS is the new body that will be established, but the ETBs will oversee the delivery of the training and education which we are relying on to upskill people and ensure their employability, so they are a step closer to the world of work. We have only one shot at getting the service right. It was the 1930s when we last did something in this sector with the Vocational Education Act. Now, 80 years later, we are introducing this Bill. It will probably be after our lifetimes before the next change is made, so it is really important that we get the composition of this right. I hope that will be the case with all the services.

There is one issue I wish to highlight in respect of the education and training section. As Members know, I am a secondary school teacher. I believe one is always a teacher. One might leave the profession, but one is still involved in teaching. I value what education means. Education is not just about getting somebody a job. I understand the intrinsic value that education brings to somebody's life. As the Minister said, education is the great liberator. It allows people to move to a different place in their lives, which would not have been possible otherwise. I am an example of that. However, given the constraints of the current economic crisis, what must be centre stage in the delivery of further education and training is the employability factor that the course will offer the person who undertakes it. The ETBs will have a strong role in this. To ensure the employability factor is part of the further education and training sector, we need to get rid of courses such as ECDL, European Computer Driving Licence. There must be a proper audit of the courses.

With regard to the composition of the boards, I regret there is no designated nomination for a business person on the board. That would be crucial. Although they can be nominated as one of the four representatives, it is a pity they are not a designated nomination. If we are to be truly successful in integrating education and training into the world of work, we must have the pulse of what is happening in industry, and the best people to tell us that is the people in industry. They would be able to guide us in a way that nobody in the Department of Education and Skills or possibly even in this House could do, with no disrespect to anybody. FIT, Fast Track to IT, is a good example of where this model is practised well and where industry has been invited to be the pulse for how it proceeds. FIT is funded through the Department of Education and Skills and has a 70% job progression rate for the people who do its courses. Its board is composed of the IBMs, Intels and so forth of this world so it is constantly addressing the needs of industry and developing courses, along with the VEC, to meet those needs. The result is that seven out of ten people who complete those courses gain full-time employment within two years. There is a lesson to be learned from that.

People need to have faith. We all have anecdotal evidence of people not having faith in the systems in place to date. One of them is FÁS. I am aware of an unemployed electrician who went to FÁS recently and the only course he was offered was fork-lift driving. His employability factor was not going to change much as a result. We must invest in career paths. When all the jigsaw pieces of SOLAS, the one-stop-shop and the ETBs we are discussing today come together, they will provide a career path to people to ensure they will be closer to the world of work when they finish, if they do not secure a job straight away.

I see the Leas-Cheann Comhairle gesturing to me to conclude. I welcome this legislation. It provides for real reform. I admire its aims. Although the Minister and I might disagree on things sometimes, I fully support all the reforms he has introduced to date and I look forward to future reforms from the Department of Education and Skills.

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