Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am taking the debate on behalf of my colleague, Deputy McConalogue, who is unavailable. On behalf of my party, I welcome the publication of the Bill and acknowledge the work the Minister of State, in particular, put into its preparation, work which was commenced by our former colleague and former Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan, during her time in the Department. This Bill and the Education and Training Boards Bill are very important steps in furthering our further education and training, FET, sector and making it more adaptable to labour market conditions.

The Minister of State went through the main provisions of the Bill and SOLAS will play a hugely important role. However, as I have always done, it is important to acknowledge the huge role played by FÁS, in particular by the staff. Despite the difficulties the organisation had, which were caused by a minimal number of staff, the vast majority of the team who work in FÁS have provided fantastic service to hundreds of thousands of people. They have given their time and their talent to many people and have provided the foundation to a huge source of skills and talent since the initiation of the organisation in 1990. It would be inappropriate for us not to acknowledge that.

Like FÁS before it, SOLAS must play a crucial role in meeting the skills requirements of our country and our economy. It must also meet the skills requirements of individuals and employers and ensure both those requirements are matched to each other. It will have to streamline the provision of further education and training while placing a major emphasis on quality assurance, in particular in regard to the provision of training and education by the private sector. However, in an employment market, the needs of which are constantly evolving and changing, our education system generally needs to become more adaptable and less resistant to change. That is one message which keeps coming from industry, and this is an appropriate time to reflect that.

While going ahead with SOLAS, the Government must continue to protect adult and community education within the new structures. The Minister of State briefly referred to the need to promote and reform the apprenticeship scheme. Even though construction is in a very serious dip currently, it will come back. The fact that just over 100,000 of those on the live register come from a construction background shows that we have very skilled unemployed people who have skills to offer to the economy. With a proper apprenticeship scheme, we can adjust those skills and give them opportunities in areas which will have growth potential in years to come. The construction sector in Ireland is currently in a dip but that is not to say it should be forgotten. Our apprenticeship scheme, in particular, and its links with the ITs needs to be reviewed and enhanced to ensure its relevance.

Given that just over 430,000 are signing on the live register, it is extraordinary to think there are vacancies in our technology sector and in many of the multinationals announcing jobs. That points to a very serious skills gap in the economy. The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, led by Senator Deirdre Clune, made a number of suggestions which we discussed with some business people last week, including Sean O'Sullivan from Open Ireland. When asked which Ministry they would choose if they wanted to influence enterprise policy, they chose the Department of Education and Skills because it is through education that we will influence our ability to attract enterprise and create enterprise culture as well as an enterprise-dependent culture. This legislation could potentially be very important in making our education system more focused on, and relevant to, the economy, and that is why we support it.

However, there is a difficulty. While we have this legislation and the words that go with it in terms of promoting our further education sector, practical decisions being taken by the Government undermine its ability to deliver. The two point increase in the pupil-teacher ratio for PLCs will result in the loss of 200 whole-time equivalent teaching posts and, in turn, the loss of many places on courses providing chances and the second chances which we will expect SOLAS to govern. One cannot promote and speak of quality when one undermines the ability to deliver that quality. We have reduced training allowances for further education and training scheme participants in VTOS, in Youthreach and in FÁS. We have reduced the allocation to VECs and the capitation rates have also been reduced. In addition to legislation and fine words, we need practical engagement in this sector. As in so many areas of government, what we have are pledges. We had it again with the Action Plan for Jobs last Friday. When it comes to implementing policy decisions, the Government is implementing decisions and cuts which undermine its ability to deliver on those pledges, and the further education and training sector is another example of that.

Currently, 270,000 further education places are being offered by a range of providers and we must ask if we are getting bang for our buck. That is one of the jobs for which SOLAS will be responsible. Some 9,000 people are employed to deliver these courses from levels one to nine in FETAC and in HETAC. While SOLAS will not deliver the programme, the education and training boards, which we discussed earlier, will be charged with that. SOLAS will be charged with overseeing the funding, ensuring the sectors which need funding get it and with making the call that funding for sectors which no longer need it goes to newer sectors. It needs the ability and the resources to do that. Most important, it needs political courage and the political support not only of the Minister of State but of his successors to be able to make tough decisions, which will probably affect institutions. Given the vacancies in our technology and language sectors, it is clear we need an organisation which has the ability to make those decisions quickly and in a manner which works in co-operation with the IDA and other State agencies.

The primary function of SOLAS includes the development and implementation of a national strategy for the delivery of further education, which is important and is under way in the Department, and to consult the Department of Social Protection and employers to determine what type of education and training programmes should be funded by SOLAS and delivered by public and other bodies. This issue of consultation is crucial and IBEC, in terms of its feedback to the consultation process which preceded this legislation, advanced a number of thoughts on what employers will be looking for from SOLAS and the further education sector in the future.

They want a system which targets supports for individuals and employers where they are needed most and allows colleges and providers to deliver an excellent service in a high skills, high employment and high productivity country. IBEC challenges SOLAS about its role in skilling and re-skilling workers. There must be clarity about its economic and social objectives. It wants a complete review of the suite of programmes to be offered and funded by the Department of Education and Skills to ensure they are relevant, have measurable outcomes, avoid duplication and achieve value for money.

There is duplication in the 270,000 places on offer. Are we getting value for money? Are the staff involved in the delivery of the programmes skilled enough to be able to be adaptable? Have they the resources to upskill themselves as well as those they propose to upskill? Most important, the needs of the Irish and world economy are changing. We do not know where the labour markets opportunities will be five years hence. We cannot have a system in which it takes between two and four years to get a course accredited and staff trained for it. Courses must be accredited and delivered within months to ensure they are relevant. The demands of students who are now starting first year in secondary school will be completely different from current demands. It is widely recognised that the Minister of State is involved in the promotion of the CoderDojo movement around the country, but many of the people starting first year in college this year have no experience of CoderDojo and in five or six years CoderDojo will be as important a skill as a foreign language, if we are still to operate to our potential as a leading country in ICT.

Will the people in SOLAS, as the people who are making the call in accreditation and quality, be suitably equipped and skilled to have the ability to be on top of that game and to be on top of where labour market trends are going? Will the wholetime equivalent staffing allocation for SOLAS reflect that need? Will it encourage people to travel from abroad to take up positions in SOLAS? They might be more comfortable with international trends and in a better position to challenge where we are going with our education system. That is what SOLAS must do. The days of a job for life are gone in the labour market. We do not know in 2013 where the job opportunities will be in 2018. One of this country's strengths is its ability, as an economy, to adapt, change and be available to where the new opportunities arise, in order to provide employment opportunities. SOLAS is crucial to that ability to adapt, and it is vital that the Minister ensures that it has the flexibility in its staffing structure to bring people in from outside and to use outside resources and expertise so it can be on top of future trends. What relationship will SOLAS have with Forfás? Forfás will be moved to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation but in terms of identifying trends, where the economy is going and where the job opportunities will be, there will have to be a strong and robust relationship between the two.

Our party and Deputy McConalogue have prepared a range of recommendations for the reform of this sector. The area of high quality soft skills is hugely important. We are setting up this new body and have just completed the legislation on the education and training boards. However, we have removed guidance provision from schools in the secondary school sector, at both vocational and non-vocational level. If we are to get careers right and to have any semblance of an economic direction, we must intervene at second level education in terms of skilling people and giving them guidance. This Government has completely pulled the rug from under guidance provision. How will we get the 2,500 extra graduates this year, which are promised in the jobs action plan? How will we be able to work with students at second level in this country, by telling them where the trends are, where the jobs might be and where their interests match where the skills are, when there is no guidance provision at that level? That is what is happening in schools across the country, due to a decision taken by this Government.

On the one hand we want this world class training and accreditation organisation, which is what this legislation seeks to provide for and everybody supports that, but on the other hand the people who have the ability to deliver the children into that world class training organisation are completely hamstrung and tied by the same Department. The legislation is great, the words are fine and the ambition of the Minister of State is admirable, and I genuinely respect what he has put into this, but the practical daily reality is that the foundation for SOLAS is being undermined on a daily basis by his Government's budgetary decisions. Unless we get that correlation right, and get the Department of Education and Skills talking to itself, not to mind other Departments, the ethos of this legislation is unfortunately fatally undermined from its inception.

There are a number of other issues. We support the call for a full review of all the places. Some of the places are still in the traditional construction skills, and where those skills were five and seven years ago. A range of courses on offer at institute of technology, IT, level still reflect the situation five years ago. We must bring them forward. We need our ITs to deliver courses in eco-systems, the new energy systems and so forth. There is a new energy action programme in the jobs action plan so we must ensure we have people who are skilled in that area. SOLAS will be responsible for that but it must have the power to challenge the IT sector to upskill its lecturers to deliver courses in renewable energy and new building techniques.

Second, we must look at the speed of this process. I referred earlier to the speed of providing new courses. Our education system is generally far too slow at moving this economy forward. We are still not teaching foreign languages in our primary schools. It is done on an ad hocbasis by some very good teachers. However, as the most open economy in the world, that is utterly dependent on foreign trade, we should have the ambition that children in every primary school will learn a foreign language, when they are most able to take on a language. That ambition can be measured and delivered. It will give children not only a skill but a cultural appreciation of another country that they can bring into secondary school.

A total of 1,000 jobs in a major multinational in this country were announced last year. There was huge celebration and the Government announced them with the normal razzmatazz. However, there was no razzmatazz about the fact that 500 of those vacancies were filled by people from outside the State, because the skilled employees could not be provided here. We did not have people with native language skills to fill those vacancies. Our education system must be adapted now so people can reach the C2 language level of being able to speak as a native. That can be done if we intervene early enough and if we have the ambition in terms of providing skills from an early enough stage in the education process. While that might not fall within the remit of SOLAS, if we have that ethos it will make life easier for SOLAS and its challenges much less demanding.

The overall ethos of the Bill is welcome. There must be a complete root and branch review of our education and training sector to ensure it is relevant. It is something that should not be provoked by the current economic crisis but which should be done anyway. We are growing too complacent about our education system and our graduates being the best in the world. The reality is that the market moves on very quickly and unless we constantly review our education and training facilities and everything we do in our economy, we will miss the boat. We could easily miss the next boat of employment creation if we do not get this legislation right.

However, as well as getting the legislation right, the practical daily decisions of the Ministers in the Department of Education and Skills must support the legislation with resources. We have a very good Bill, supported by most Members of the House, with very grand and lofty ambitions, but when it is implemented and the 400,000 people looking for a job approach SOLAS for an opportunity, we do not want a situation where the SOLAS staff do not have the resources or backup and do not have adequate places on courses where the demand exists or courses that will not be filled. The practical measures and the budget must follow the legislation. We will pursue the Minister on that issue. The legislation is welcome and Deputy McConalogue will table amendments on the later Stages, but it is on the practicalities and follow through that we will pursue the Minister.

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