Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The increase in employment of 61,000 in the past 12 months - or 66,500 if one looks only at the private sector - is nothing to do with increased emigration. These are extra people at work in Ireland today. Emigration could be any number, but the fact is there are additional people in work who were not in work 12 months ago. The past five quarters have seen increases in the employment rate. Over that period, we have seen well over 80,000 additional people at work in the private sector, which is a dramatic improvement on what went before. Deputy Crowe knows as well as I do that the preceding years saw net reductions in employment, of 160,000 in one year, for example, and 50,000 in another. Now we are seeing enterprises being created and new opportunities opening up.

Our challenge is to ensure those who are out of work get a fair crack at the 66,500 new opportunities in the private sector. That is what Pathways to Work is all about. The figure of 137,500 people coming off the live register gives an indication that there is a lift for those who are out of work, but we need to keep working at it. The Deputy is right that it is sometimes easier for companies to hire somebody straight from school rather than from the live register. That is why we have introduced schemes like JobsPlus, which offers a subsidy of €72 per week to employers who take on a person who has been out of work for 12 months or more. Where people are out of work for two years, which is the cohort about which we are talking with Gateway, the subsidy increases to €100 per week for two years. These types of incentives are vital to creating a level playing pitch in the recruitment race for such opportunities.

We are trying to provide a range of options for those who are out of work. In that context, I absolutely defend our having a programme run by the local authorities which offers real work experience in a well-organised workplace. It is really worthwhile and something we ought to promote. It is not fair for Deputy Crowe to come in here and present it as some type of slave labour scheme. He must consider the whole spectrum of what is being offered, including Springboard, JobBridge and JobsPlus. There is a range of different offers with which we are seeking to match people's needs.

The other issue with which the Deputy was concerned is the expectation that if people are offered an opportunity, they will participate. The reality is that this is a well-established principle that applies right across all the activation regimes in Europe of which I am aware. As a joint member, with the Minister for Social Protection, of the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council, I am aware that the concept of a contract whereby people are expected, where they get a reasonable offer, to take it up is generally accepted across all EU member states. The notion that there is some expectation and therefore some sanction if people refuse to participate in worthwhile programmes is the norm right across the system and reflects the concept of a developmental welfare system. The National Economic and Social Council pronounced on this issue some years ago, but perhaps it was not sufficiently heeded. The principle is that this is a two-way street - that Government creates a range of options which give people a chance to develop themselves, but there is also an expectation that they will engage. All the evidence I have seen supports this approach. I used to participate in the National Economic and Social Forum and all pillars of that forum accepted this notion of a contract whereby Government creates opportunities and there is an expectation that people will avail of them. That is the correct approach and it is the one adopted in most countries, including those which are not facing as great an unemployment challenge as we are. The longer people are out of the workplace the more difficult it is to place them and the more demoralised they can become. The system we have been developing is one over which we absolutely can stand.

The Deputy referred to the need to develop new training opportunities, a point with which I entirely agree. We are at a pivotal point where we need to see a much stronger commitment by employers to develop traineeships, apprenticeships and new forms of training. One of the problems we had, which was aggravated by the Celtic tiger boom years, was that everybody was of the view that the academic route was the route to go and employers allowed good traineeships to decay. My colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Ciarán Cannon, and his officials have highlighted the fact that there used to be 40 traineeship programmes but now there are only 18. That decline did not happen because the State was not willing to support those programme but because the on-the-job element required to make them a success was lacking. Another factor was that apprenticeships fell through the floor with the collapse of the construction sector.

The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, has recently published a review of apprenticeships. We are at a point now where we can, with considerable confidence for the future, push out new models of traineeship and apprenticeship and seek to encourage employers to buy into that effort on a more permanent basis. If one considers the countries in Europe that have weathered the recession better than we have, a strong tradition of maintaining traineeships and apprenticeships is most likely a feature. Commentators often cite Germany and Austria in this regard, with particular reference to the so-called mittelstand companies where this has been a feature. These are strong companies that have been able to withstand the recession. We, too, need to build an industrial base of companies which will make that type of commitment to training. As I understand it, SOLAS will produce its own strategy statement within weeks. One of its main challenges, as I see it, will be to build out that platform for our growing private sector.

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