Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I was very happy to co-author an article in yesterday's edition of The Guardian in which I repeated what I said in my address to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, namely, that Europe must take action to reflate member states' economies and get people back to work. I am a practical person and during my entire time in politics, what I have been interested in is young people. I worked for a long period in third level education and I am of the view that it is terrible to see wonderfully qualified young people from Donegal to Dublin to Cork emerging from college into a very tight jobs market. These individuals have qualifications but they do not have work experience. Internships are meant to allow them to obtain such experience. I am aware that the Deputy has grave difficulties with this concept but in other countries where it operates extremely well, it allows people to obtain a degree of experience in order that they might subsequently find work. People are doing so across all job and placement schemes. In the context of community employment, of which I believe the Deputy is on record as being broadly in favour, one must always be very careful with regard to the issue of displacement.

Indecon is an independent consultancy company which, I understand, attracts very strong and positive recommendations. It carried out a survey and interviewed people in real time at my request. I did not want to wait five years to discover the position. I wanted to be able to give people such as the Deputy, who are obviously thoughtful about schemes of this nature, the actual figures involved. Those figures are not mine, they are those presented by independent consultants. I suggest that they offer food for thought as to how we can assist people in their 20s and 30s who have emerged from college and who cannot find jobs in this particularly tight employment market.

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