Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the chance to say a few words on a very important budget. I thank my senior ministerial colleague, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, for making time available for me to deal with a few issues, particularly the further education and training aspect of our budget. This is a very important part of the Department's budget, representing a spend of nearly €810 million. It is great to confirm that the budget is intact this year and that the Department will have the same amount to spend to maintain approximately 270,000 training places over the year ahead.

We have been through a great deal of reform in the further education and training area over the last couple of years. While we might have liked reforms to happen quicker, they are now in place. We have SOLAS, which will drive the policy agenda in the area with its five-year strategy, and we have the education and training boards, which have resulted in the reduction of 33 VECs to 16 boards. We now have the infrastructure and key personnel to drive the reform agenda and deliver the training to provide people with the skills they need. We are helping people improve their skills, develop new skills and return to work. We have the right plans and format in place, and the key was ensuring we kept the budget intact, which we have. There will be €810 million to spend in this area in the year ahead, which I welcome.

Of the total budget, more than €640 million will be channelled through SOLAS to the education and training boards, while the remaining €170 million will be provided directly by the Department to fund the post-leaving certificate, PLC, programme. There is great demand for the PLC programme in all counties, which is great to see, and there is great success from it in terms of job placement. The Momentum programme, which targets the long-term unemployed, was launched in September 2014 and will be funded through 2015. The Momentum contract procedures provide for 2,000 places to be made available to individuals under 25 years of age in line with the commitments outlined in the implementation plan for the youth guarantee in Ireland. In addition, the Department is funding the Springboard and ICT skills conversion programmes for the National Training Fund. The level of funding for the programmes will be maintained at approximately €28 million for 2015. We are obtaining great value for money in these programmes and making a significant investment in helping people to get the skills they need to get back to work.

The ICT, information and communications technology plan, is working. When it started, we could only fill 40% of positions in this area. The target was to get to 60% but we have actually gone beyond that. By 2018, we will be able to fill 75% of places that come available in the ICT sector. It is important we have the skills to fill these places because all over Europe there is a serious demand for people with ICT skills. We must ensure our education system turns out enough ICT graduates to fill the jobs that become available here. We will never fill them all, so it is important to bring skills into the country. Accordingly, we have changed the permit system to allow for that.

The ICT plan is working and the Springboard programme is a major part of it. Four out of ten people who engage in Springboard courses get employment within six weeks while over six out of ten participants will get a job in six months. I compliment some of the educational institutions on how quickly they turn around these programmes. Many of them respond positively when industry approaches them with an idea.

SOLAS, an tSeirbhís Oideachais Leanúnaigh agus Scileanna, with the assistance of relevant experts such as the ESRI, the Economic and Social Research Institute, employers, along with local and national organisations, has published its five-year strategy. This will involve service level agreements with training boards which can be adapted to reflect local needs. In my other role as enterprise Minister, I visit many companies which tell me they will be creating jobs in certain sectors. We want to be able to respond at local, as well as national, level to ensure we can adapt training board courses to match what industry needs. We are pushing collaboration between industry and education training boards, as well as third and fourth level institutions, to ensure they communicate and respond to each other’s needs. While great progress has been made in this area, we cannot be in a position a year from now where we have jobs to be filled but not the right skills to do so. The funding is in place to achieve this, as well as the reforms.

Another important part of these reforms is the formation of the apprenticeship council over the coming months. There were some delays in getting the various players together for this but each body has its representatives on it now. The Minister for Education and Skills will finalise the appointments soon and its first job will be to make a call to the various sectors for their ideas to develop new apprenticeships. Ireland has fewer than 30 apprenticeship courses. Germany, in comparison, has 400 different types of apprenticeship models. While we will never get to the 400 mark, we will certainly want to adapt our system to cover as many as possible. In some areas it makes sense to introduce new apprenticeship models to ensure the skills are coming through to fill future jobs vacancies. I hope industry will get involved in this process as most apprenticeships are industry driven anyway.

Like the Minister for Finance yesterday, I must confirm what we are not doing. There will be no increases in school transport charges, although there is serious pressure on that budget. The post-primary charge will remain at €350 per child with a maximum of €650 per family. At primary level, it will remain at €100 per child with a maximum of €220 per family. I know people have issues with the changes to charges over the past three years. Where we can, we are trying to apply common sense and address each need as we can. It must be borne in mind that the overall cost per child works out at €1,000 and that those on medical cards do not pay.

As part of my role as Minister of State with special responsibility for skills, research and innovation, I recognise the recovery and growth in the jobs sector is through companies involved in research and development and innovation, matching their money with taxpayer funding. We are seeing a major increase in spin-outs and start-ups from this area. There is much work going on through our research centres with Enterprise Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, tapping into taxpayer funding and industry money, stretching the benefits for both. The capital allocation for the main research funding institutions, SFI, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, has gone up €13 million to €357 million. We hope to be able to increase that later in the year.

From this we hope to have an extra 100 potential start-up companies in the year ahead. SFI will announce another five large-scale research centres in the next several weeks. This will be a major player in providing 3,000 start-ups a year. We will bring together our educational institutions with their expertise and research communities, small and medium-sized enterprises and multinationals to innovate and create products which our companies can sell and export all over the world. This will drive recovery and change. We are concentrating on the commercialisation agenda of research. The Government has agreed priority areas and funding will be directed to them. I welcome the fact the budget for this sector has been increased this year as it is an important sector to drive our overall economic recovery.

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