Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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It was announced on the 10 a.m. news that 650 jobs would be lost at Ulster Bank in this jurisdiction. This is a nervous time for the employees and a very serious issue. I appreciate that Ulster Bank is not covered by the State, but has it entered into discussions with the relevant Ministers on the redundancies announced? The Irish Bank Officials Association, IBOA, is predicting significant job losses across the sector, with a figure of 5,000 being mentioned. That only relates to the banking sector; there is also the wider insurance market and so on. What is the Government doing to protect jobs, as far as possible, in the relevant sectors? What are the plans to assist workers who will be made redundant in order that they can be retrained and secure alternative employment? It is important that the Government give information on the jobs that will be affected. Are we talking about back or front office or retail staff? What grades will be involved? Have discussions on job losses taken place with the covered institutions such as Bank of Ireland and AIB? What information does the Government have in this regard? There could be a cumulative effect, as if more workers are let go, it will become more difficult to absorb them into expanding financial services.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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We all extend our sympathy to those directly affected by this morning's announcement. On this island Ulster Bank employs approximately 6,000 people, 900 of whom are affected by this announcement. Of those affected, we understand 650 are in the Republic of Ireland. The announcement has come at the end of much speculation and there is now a degree of certainty, although none of us might like this.

Regarding skill sets, the Deputy has noted that Ulster Bank is not a covered institution; it is owned by a British parent company. We do not know the profile of those likely to lose their jobs, but there are vacancies in the information technology sector. Members may have heard the chief executive of IDA Ireland, Mr. Barry O'Leary, say on radio recently that there were approximately 1,000 jobs that could be filled if the right skill sets were available. If persons employed in the banking sector work in the area of information technology, they already have high skill levels. We are putting in place a series of measures to upgrade these skills and reorient such persons to areas in which there are job opportunities.

The Deputy has asked if there have been discussions involving the Minister. I am not entirely sure about that and will revert to the Deputy with the necessary information. I know management in Ulster Bank has, in the first instance and as is right and proper, spoken to representatives of the workers affected, including the IBOA. We await the outcome of the discussions.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Skill sets are crucial and the Minister has indicated that persons with high skill levels are much more likely to find alternative employment. It could easily be the case that individuals working at the retail end as cashiers could be affected and retraining and upskilling would be crucial to their job prospects. May I take it that on completion of the profiling of the staff to be laid off, discussions will take place immediately with training agencies to ensure those affected will be assisted? It would be better to deal with these issues quickly.

Have discussions with representatives of the covered institutions taken place on potential redundancies? The Government has direct involvement, as it is either the guarantor or main shareholder in these institutions. Does the Minister have any information on the discussions which have taken place between the covered institutions and the Government on potential redundancies in the wider financial sector?

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The Government will soon announce a comprehensive programme called, Pathways to Work, which will address many of the issues to which the Deputy referred. Taking Ulster Bank as an example, somebody from that institution will have his or her skill sets assessed and options will be offered as to how he or she might upgrade his or her skills or divert sideways to improve his or her skills and enhance his or her suitability in terms of job opportunities. What he or she wants to do will be taken into account is assessing whether upskilling is required to enhance his or her employability in those sectors of the labour market in which employers are actively seeking workers.

I do not know what the position is on covered institutions, but I will get that information for the Deputy. As there have been no other redundancies announced, it might be premature to raise the issue. The same approach would apply, irrespective of how staff were made redundant or the status of the institution. We will try to upgrade skill sets and reorient those affected to enhance their chances of getting back into the active labour market.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am sure the workers concerned will appreciate the expressions of sympathy from this Chamber, but they, like the almost 500,000 others out of work, take the view that sympathy is not enough. When did the Government first receive notice of these job losses which are significant in number? It would be astonishing if the story just fell fall from the sky. At this juncture is the Government satisfied that the terms and conditions of the redundancy packages are secure?

We should return to the issue of retraining and upskilling. The Minister has indicated that the priority for the Administration is job creation, but all the evidence speaks against this. There are stubbornly high numbers out of work and there has been minimal investment by the Government in job creation and protection measures. We have been told that we will see not a jobs initiative this month but other types of jobs plan from the Government. Where will these workers and workers from the banking sector feature in that scheme of things? If the experience of the construction sector is anything to go by, where vast numbers of workers find their sector a job-free zone, I imagine people in the banking sector are looking on in despair. What confidence can the Minister give to those workers today? What contact has there been with Government and what does the Minister propose to do in the first instance for this set of workers and then more broadly for the 500,000 people who are without work?

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I thank the Deputy for her question but, unfortunately, I must remind her that this country has lost its economic sovereignty. We are not in business as usual and when it was business as usual it was mad business. The construction sector to which she referred represented 25% of economic activity in the Republic. That was twice the normal requirement in a growing economy. As an adjunct to that the banking sector grew exponentially in a manner of which all Members are aware. It must be scaled down and it is scaling down but that comes at a cost such as the kind of unemployment and redundancies to which Deputy McDonald referred and to which I referred in my replies to Deputy Ó Cuív.

In this instance, for those people who have skill sets we hope to be able to enhance them and reorientate them towards areas where there are jobs. Sadly, from my point of view as Minister for Education and Skills, many of the young men or young boys - because they were 16, 17 and 18 - who were lured out of the education system into highly paid and lucrative jobs at the height of the boom now find themselves at 19 and 20 years of age with poor sets of skills which will require re-entry into the education sector and the vocational education sector to acquire a new set of skills which, sadly, they did not have the opportunity to achieve while they were in school.

We must work to a programme of recovery. We are 14 months into the programme of recovery that was negotiated initially by the previous Administration which in its entirety will take 36 months. We have 20 months left of having to negotiate with and obtain money from the troika, who are in town at the moment. We will do everything we can to stave off the increases in unemployment. The good news - although it is not good news - is that the level of unemployment seems to have plateaued, yet within those figures of 400,000, more than 120,000 people got jobs in the past year. There is a churn within the labour market. People are getting jobs and losing jobs but the scale of unemployment and the rapid increase in unemployment has now, fortunately, tailed off. Some of it - in anticipation of the Deputy's reply - is due to emigration, which we deeply regret. The Government is intent on recovering the economic sovereignty of this Republic which was shattered by the previous Administration. One of the things that shattered it was the bank guarantee to which Deputy McDonald's party signed up with some enthusiasm.

Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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It was 7 December.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Now, now.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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That was a nice try by the Minister but he did not answer the question. Perhaps he does not have the information on when the Government was aware of those job losses. He said it is not business as usual. Of course it is not business as usual; it is certainly not business as usual for those workers or for any other worker who is seeking employment at the moment and who hears on the one hand from the Government the rhetoric of job creation but who sees the evidence of inertia. I do not believe that job creation is the priority for the Government. The Minister correctly said that the banking sector, in common with the construction sector, was used and abused by the great and the good - the speculators and the wealthy-----

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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The Deputy should please ask a question.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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-----and now they get bailed out and the workers in those sectors suffer. The challenge for the Government is to give comfort, certainty and opportunities to those workers. What about their redundancy packages? Are they secure? The Minister should be in a position to tell the House and to offer more than vague rhetoric about skill sets. This is a specific sector. It is most unlikely that people in the banking sector who are now going to lose their jobs will be re-employed in that sector. What will the Government, which is all about jobs, re-skilling and retraining - that is also about cutbacks - do to ensure those workers get back to work and to some kind of business as usual?

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I do not know if Deputy McDonald was listening to the reply I offered to Deputy Ó Cuív-----

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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I was.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Then I have already answered the Deputy's question. The workers will not get new jobs in the banking sector. Those who have IT skills that can be refocused into other areas in which there are opportunities, as Barry O'Leary from the IDA has said, will hopefully find opportunities.

I wish to respond to a comment made by Deputy McDonald about the madness of the building speculation affecting the rich and the powerful. If that had happened it would not have been too bad. Unfortunately, we had the madness where people on CE schemes were offered mortgages and they are the people who have been crucified. Right across the country and in particular in parts of the north west, between Dublin and Sligo, the four counties that are most affected by ghost estates, many of the people who were conned into taking out mortgages were conned into it by the financial sector. They were not necessarily the great and the good. They were, sadly, people who had an aspiration to own property and who were conned into taking a soft loan which in rational banking terms they could never possibly have repaid given the level of their income. That is where the real damage has been done.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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For clarity, I said the sectors were abused by the great and the good.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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To answer the Deputy's specific question - I am responding to the point she made - the labour movement, both the Labour Party and the trade union movement, believe it is the responsibility of trade unions in the first instance to represent the rights of workers and to do so directly with their employers. To the best of my knowledge, the Ulster Bank has conducted its negotiations rightly and properly with the direct representatives of the banking workers in the Ulster Bank. We will await to hear from the negotiators, the IBOA, if they so choose, whether they want the assistance and help of the Government to negotiate the necessary redundancy packages. The Government has every confidence in the ability of the IBOA to negotiate the entitlements and packages to which their members are entitled and for which they are eligible. If there are difficulties which are beyond the capacity of the social partners to sort out themselves then the Government will assist but it is not the business of the Government to interfere in that process. They are well able to do it themselves. If they run into difficulties the machinery of the State is there to assist them but there have been no requests for such assistance.

Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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I wish to raise the important issue of education. I am pleased the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, is present in the Chamber. In particular, I wish to refer to the proposed cuts to DEIS schools, the most disadvantaged schools in the State. I do not know whether the Minister is aware that parents, teachers and entire communities are upset about the proposed cuts and about the damage to education.

I wish to focus my questions on DEIS schools. Does the Minister accept as a core principle that one of the most important ways out of poverty in any country is education? Why then is he taking 428 DEIS teaching posts from 270 primary schools and 163 post-primary schools? Does the Minister understand the damage that will do to those pupils and families? Does he understand the work done in DEIS schools with children at risk and dysfunctional pupils with major problems in their lives? Four year olds come to school every day with huge problems. Does the Minister really understand educational disadvantage? Why is he trying to dismantle a service that has proven to work in the past ten years for the most needy pupils in the State? On the broader issue of education and the economy, many consider that the Minister is penalising those poor pupils for the actions of bankers, developers and politicians. They feel they are taking the rap for the actions of others. There is a gross injustice in that.

The Minister should be careful with his reply to my final question. Does he accept that the Government could be in breach of Article 28.1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Education Act 1998 by removing those posts from the education service? I accept that a review is being carried out. Many of the Minister's colleagues on the backbenches have major concerns on the matter. Deputy John Lyons made an excellent speech last night. As people have major concerns about this, I urge the Minister to rescind the decision to cut these services to disadvantaged pupils.

Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Another U-turn. I thank Deputy John Lyons.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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If I may remind the Deputy, like himself, I, too, represent a constituency with an inner-city core with a high level of disadvantage. Over my time in Dublin South-East I have seen intergenerational poverty when dealing with the grandchildren of people I first dealt with many decades ago. I agree education is the great liberator. I would not be in this Chamber if it were not for the chance that I had the good fortune and opportunity to be educated to the level I have been, and I want that same chance to be applied to every other child of this republic.

There are no DEIS-designated teachers being taken out of any DEIS-band school. I refer to teachers who are identified as being in a school previous to the introduction of DEIS. We are now looking at the impact of operation of those teachers in combination with the other teachers in those schools. We are looking at the effectiveness of the total programme now that we have a Department of Children and Youth Affairs. As a teacher, Deputy McGrath will readily appreciate that education begins in the home and this can mean literacy or even feeding children with a decent breakfast so that they can go to school to learn on a full stomach and not on an empty one, as is the case, sadly, with many children in disadvantaged schools. We will examine the impact of the proposals suggested to see how they can be operated, ameliorated or changed in order that we do not have any consequence that is not intended.

I remind the Deputy and other Members that 60% of disadvantaged children go to normal, non-DEIS schools. There is no monopoly of misery nor of disadvantage in the DEIS schools per se. I acknowledge there is a significant level of disadvantage in those schools but 60% of disadvantaged children are not in those schools and we have to address the entirety of the education population. Even if the totality of the proposed changes were to be implemented, the impact would amount to 0.3% on the entire teaching cohort in the system. Both the Government and I want to liberate children from poverty by means of education in order that they can walk tall themselves. This is the intention and that is what we are trying to do by means of the review and report to be undertaken in the next four weeks.

Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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I thank the Minister for his response. I urge him to ensure the review digs deep in the next four weeks and ask him to examine the return of these teachers to these particular schools. I agree there is no monopoly of disadvantage. However, I worked for many years in a disadvantaged school and know there are different levels of disadvantage. For instance, there is crisis disadvantage in many seriously disadvantaged schools and this is different from a school where there are low-income families or those just above the poverty line.

I urge the Minister to use the review to examine the most needy schools and the most needy pupils. He says the consequences are not intended but I warn him if he removes teachers from these poor schools, there will be serious consequences and it will cost him more in the future and it will also cost the State more in the future. It might be a figure of 0.3% but as far as I am concerned and as far as many people in this House and members of the Technical Group are concerned, damaging schools - poor schools - and discriminating against children living in poverty should never be an option for trying to solve the economic crisis in the country.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Deputy Finian McGrath is a teacher and I will respond to him by saying that the logic of applying additional resources to any endeavour, particularly in the area of education, is that in order to justify the application of those additional resources, one must measure the consequences of those inputs to see the benefit. The three reports being published today, one by the Educational Research Centre in St. Patrick's College and two by the inspectorate of the Department of Education and Skills, show there are measurable outcomes in the DEIS schools proper and these are positive outcomes in the main. In the areas where schools are not able to implement an agreed programme or plan - As I am not a professional educationist, I do not wish to sound like one - where the burden on such schools is such that it is not possible, for whatever reason - these reasons are multi-factorial - to follow a plan of improvement over a period of time, then the results are not that great.

I refer to one of the difficulties with some of the earlier schemes such as Breaking the Cycle and Giving Children an Even Break. There was not the same rigorous level of measurement of outcomes as with DEIS and this will need to be examined. There is no point in putting in additional resources if 60% of disadvantaged children are in mainstream regular schools. In my view, as Minister for Education and Skills, there is no point putting in additional resources if there is no mechanism for measuring the outcome of those additional resources.

I refer to the rhetoric used by Deputy McGrath although I do not suspect he intended it. However, heightened rhetoric such as, "I warn you there will be serious consequences", which was used on 12 January about events that will not take effect until next September, this is not the tone of debate we wish to hear when discussing the future of five, six and seven year olds or their parents-----

Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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It is not rhetoric; it is a genuine concern.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The Deputy should listen to what he said: "I warn you there will be serious consequences."

Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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What I mean is it is dangerous for the children of the State.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I have examined this matter very closely, having drilled down deep, so to speak, and into all sectors of the education system-----

Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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I object; it is not rhetoric.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Perhaps it was the tone of the remarks. We want a debate that is passionate but also compassionate as regards what we are trying to achieve collectively in this House.