Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have not seen the recent letter. I will follow up on that to see where it is in the system and activate that process. Deputies McAuliffe and Lahart and Senator Fitzpatrick were instrumental in organising that meeting. I will engage with them and Deputy Boyd Barrett to follow through on those issues.

The Government has decided to extend the pandemic unemployment payment from the previous midsummer date to September and beyond, into February of next year, albeit at reduced rates from September. The comments on students were not fair. The Government has been supportive of students in the context of the application of the pandemic unemployment payment in an unprecedented way. Ordinarily, students have never availed of social welfare payments while studying full time at college, yet the Government, in the context of the pandemic, supported students through the pandemic unemployment payment. It was unprecedented. It has been very helpful and supportive to students and their families and it is not fair to try to characterise it as anything but that. It is certainly not minimalist, as Deputy McDonald tried to suggest.

A great deal of populism is going on at the moment. Everybody wants to appeal to everybody and a by-election campaign is taking place, but there needs to be balance and perspective in regard to how we emerge from the pandemic and invest in new sectors. The most important thing we can do for young people is to invest in education, research and skills and reskilling, and to provide more places in further education, apprenticeships and third level.

We will do that. We did it last year and the economic recovery plan provides substantial investment for thousands of additional places, through SOLAS, the further education sector, third level and fourth level in terms of research. That is what we have to do as a country in terms of making sure we are competitive into the future as an economy. We have to invest in human capital and young people and give them the opportunity to gain additional qualifications to reskill, in terms of the retrofit programme, for example.

We need more apprenticeships in construction. Everyone talks about housing. We need more people who are skilled to build houses into the future. That human capacity has to be built up to get to the 30,000 or 40,000 capacity towards the end of the decade. That will be a key ingredient and is where resources have to be targeted in the future.

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