Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Many job losses have been announced in recent weeks, which are a deep concerns to all of us. As the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, I get notification of many of those, and I am very aware of the real impact it is having on people.

Some of those job losses are directly related to Covid-19, for example, in the airlines the Deputy mentioned. Some are not; they would have happened in any case. I refer to those in banking and those in the Kerry Group, for example, which the Deputy mentioned. In fairness, nobody in those industries, certainly not in the banks and certainly not in the Kerry Group, has pretended they are related to Covid. They are related to restructuring in the case of the Kerry Group and to a change in the way people bank and the way banks operate in regard to banking.

In terms of the policy of Government, it is three-fold. First, it is to save as many jobs and businesses that we can, particularly those businesses that are viable but vulnerable. We have put €11 billion into that already if we take the employment wage subsidy scheme, the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRISS, and the pandemic unemployment payment. A a huge amount of money is borrowed but it is the right decision to borrow that money to save as many jobs and businesses as possible.

The second is to continue to create new jobs. What is encouraging at the moment is that there is still a very good pipeline of new jobs being created, particularly in areas like technology, digital, pharmaceutical, medical devices, distribution and transport. IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland, EI, under my remit, are driving forward that jobs agenda.

The third is offering training and educational opportunities to as many people as possible to people who may wish to retrain to gain new skills and to the young people the Deputy mentioned. More people will start third level education this year than ever before and from a more diverse set of backgrounds than ever before. The same applies to lifelong learning and further education, which is being driven forward very much by the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris.

In terms of the timeline for the national economic plan, we had initially proposed to do that in January given the effect of the third wave on our country in terms of jobs lost and the effect on the economy. We have put back that. We expect now that it will be in the summer, probably around May or June, but in April we will have the stability programme update, the spring statement, which will be brought in by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe. Also in April, we will have the allocations from the €850 million European recovery fund and, hopefully, the €1 billion Brexit fund but that is still under negotiation. We will then have the revised national development plan and the new economic plan, which we expect to have for May or June.

The issue the Deputy raised on redundancy is difficult and complicated. It affects a number of issues and we are in discussions with unions and employers on that. Nobody wants to see a year's redundancy being lost because people were on the PUP through no fault of their own. At the same time putting that cost on business has a consequence also. We are trying to work out that in consultation with ICTU and IBEC.

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