Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If Deputy Peadar Tóibín had not spoken, the Minister might have been thinking that the Limerick Deputies were ganging up on her. This is the third contribution to be made by a Deputy who represents a Limerick constituency.

I am pleased to participate in the debate on this important subject. I welcome the reduction in the rate of unemployment, which stood at 15% when my party joined the last Government but now stands at less than 8%. In addition to focusing on the decrease in the rate of unemployment which is a very positive development, it is important to say there has been a significant increase in the number of actual jobs. The figures for areas outside Dublin mentioned by the Minister are also to be welcomed because they show that there is some balance in the growth, despite the point made by Deputies Peadar Tóibín and Niall Collins that some regions still need support. It is important that we maintain a strong focus on ensuring development is balanced. For that reason, I was delighted to be present at the launch of the mid-west jobs action plan a couple of months ago. The regional jobs action plans are really important. They need to be implemented and the targets set in them need to be reached. It is important that the specific targets for each region are built on their strengths. When the Minister is responding at the end of the debate, she might talk about how these aspects are being monitored to ensure the individual regional jobs action plans are being delivered on.

That is really important and is something that needs to be monitored.

One of the reasons my region in particular has had strong growth is because of the interaction between the educational institutions and the job creation targets. In Limerick, we have the University of Limerick, Limerick IT, Mary Immaculate College and the colleges of the Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board. There has been a very strong connection between opportunities for employment growth and the educational institutions. That is a vital factor. I pay tribute to Enterprise Ireland, the IDA and the local enterprise offices because there has been a strong sense of working together to anticipate need, such as putting on specific courses designed to support new jobs coming into the region. That is certainly my experience in my region.

There are programmes such as Springboard, which was under my Department when I was the Minister for Education and Skills. It means people who have a skill which no longer has job opportunities can be retrained. They can be retrained in areas such, as IT or wherever there are job opportunities. That is a very good programme which has a high record of employment for the people who participate in it.

Concentrating on sectors has been positive. Tourism, for example, with the reduction in the VAT rate, has been an area of strong growth. However, I support the point made by Sinn Féin Deputies that there are still many on low wages in the tourism sector and in other sectors. Continuing to increase the minimum wage is going to help in that regard. I am not going to rehearse last night's debate but we increased the minimum wage twice during the lifetime of the last Government and that progress needs to continue. It also needs to continue in the context of the high rate of low pay among female workers which was an issue raised by the Minister and by Deputy Quinlivan. All of those areas are ones in which we need constant improvement, particularly with regard to the minimum wage.

I wish to focus on people who are at risk of unemployment. I am talking about people in situations of intergenerational unemployment or people who do not aspire to go to a college but who need opportunities. I am very proud of the fact that we were able to set up the Apprenticeship Council and start the beginnings of new apprenticeships. I have the report of the Apprenticeship Council here. Some 86 areas were identified as possibilities for new apprenticeships and 25 of those were prioritised to be rolled out over the next year in areas such as manufacturing and engineering, tourism and sport, financial services, IT, transport, distribution and logistics and business administration and management. That is under way now and will provide real opportunities for choice for young people. The Minister mentioned the educational options available in Germany, Austria and so on. We need those kinds of options.

We also need to continue to increase the number of apprenticeships in the traditional construction area. That went up by approximately 40% last year. It needs to continue to go up because, as the economy recovers, we need tradesmen and tradeswomen in our economy. We also need to encourage people who have gone abroad to come back to Ireland to work. There are many people with construction experience and trades who are working abroad who can, and should, come back to Ireland.

I contrast that with a time when the economy was beginning to grow and we were getting close to what was described as full employment, although I take the point that was made that it is not actually full employment. The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment at the time was Mary Harney of the Progressive Democrats. I remember her going off to countries thousands of miles away to try to attract workers to come to work in Ireland. At the same time, there were young people living in my constituency who had dropped out of school early and were simply being paid the dole, without any effort to retrain them or give them the skills that would give them opportunities of jobs. As the economy grows again, we must not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of going off to look for workers in other parts of the world, apart from the Irish people we want to bring home. I am not saying that people should not have free movement and come here if they have special skills. I am talking about educating and training young people in Ireland to be able to take jobs in their own country. That is why the turnaround in the Department of Social Protection led by Deputy Joan Burton was very important because she turned it into a Department that was not just paying out money but was actually giving people opportunities to go on training or education schemes or get in to work. That is why the Intreo offices are really important.

Training programmes have played a part. Even in our own manifesto, we said that we would phase out JobBridge. I know that it has been the subject of criticism from various sides of the House. There are other schemes such as community employment schemes and so on that have given real opportunity to people to get training in their own communities and to support community organisations and we need to acknowledge the importance of those schemes. Deputy Quinlivan will know very well St. Munchin's Community Centre, King's Island Community Centre, Moyross Community Centre, Southill Area Centre and Our Lady of Lourdes Community Services Group, in which people are working. In St. Munchin's, for example, which Deputy Quinlivan would be very familiar with, people are able to move on to real jobs in the social economy and set up their own small businesses as a result of what happens in the centre. We need to build on that and support our communities through supporting these centres. There are problems with some of the schemes but there have certainly been positive opportunities. I have seen people go from no hope of employment to getting a real job or a self-employed job as a result of these opportunities.

There are a number of opportunities in other sectors, such as the arts. I know that there has been a response to the fact that the arts has not got a junior Minister and is in a very big Department. There are very good job opportunities in the area of the arts that we need to develop.

Over the last two evenings, we have had the opportunity to speak about workers' rights and ensuring people are protected from low pay and exploitation. I do not wish to go back over what I said on that but it is really important that, as the number of jobs grows, there are properly paid jobs and people are treated properly. The Minister of State at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Pat Breen, said in his speech on Tuesday that the latest CSO figures show that the number of casual and part-time workers is continuing to fall and that in the year to April 2016, the number of such workers fell by 8.3%, or, in real figures, 5,798. He also mentioned that figures for part-time under-employment were down. We need to focus on those areas as well so that people have the opportunity to have full-time jobs where they are available for full-time jobs. There are many casual jobs now in the economy and we need to ensure we continue to make progress in that area as well.

I am glad of the opportunity to participate in this debate. I believe there are many opportunities to continue to develop the economy and job opportunities. My main point is that we want that to be inclusive. We do not want to have a sector in our society and in our communities that is left out of opportunities for employment. We need to bring all of the strands together, including education, training, job opportunities and all of the support structures to ensure that those people are included in a growing economy and a developing society.

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