Results 6,381-6,400 of 11,114 for speaker:Damien English

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: I have a final question on Horizon 2020. The high level group reviews are every year or two years. A large amount of funding has been targeted, and that is worthwhile, but do we measure the outcomes in terms of what is commercialised and what is internationalised? I refer to the numbers at the end of that. What other indicators do we examine? Targeting the money is one aspect, and I...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: They are all very welcome. I thank them for coming.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: Yes, and the semester as well. We could hear from Mr. Cullen about that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: Is the cost of making the application a deterrent?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: The success rate has been recognised by our colleagues in the Northern Ireland Assembly who visited the committee before Christmas.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: They were particularly interested in engaging with us on the matter because of the great work the Department has been doing. They recognised that the results have been extremely good for drawing down funding.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: I do not agree with the Secretary General on that point. We have to address that issue because it will be a problem in the future. There is no point in PayPal investing and creating 1,000 jobs here if we can only aim to fill 500 of them. I accept that it is not a short-term win but addressing it involves more than the input of the Department of Education and Skills in that it must be...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: That would great.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: The reason I raise the point is that while I accept that the Department of Education and Skills has a good deal to do, in presentations made to us through the colleges it has been indicated that students do not necessarily understand the importance of having a language. It is not always the case that the skills are not provided, but the message has to go out that they need to acquire them...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: Yes. I thank Mr. Shanahan and the Secretary General for their responses.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: I thank the Secretary General. That is another issue raised with me a good deal. I am glad that the report has been published and that there is a new strategy in that respect. When the engineers association appeared before the committee, we had a discussion on the issue of youth unemployment and it highlighted the fact that we should re-examine the model used. That concludes session 1.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: We will move on to session 2 covering the six-monthly European Union scrutiny report, an update on developments on COM (2013) 207, a draft directive regarding the disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by certain large companies and groups. I again invite the Secretary General to make an opening statement which will be followed by questions from the members. The Secretary...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: We can take it as read and go through it as we proceed. As Deputy Áine Collins and others have said, during our recent familiarisation trip in the first week of January, at all of the various levels we received extremely good feedback on the work done during the Irish Presidency and the Secretary General's Department was signalled out for much praise and good comment. I refer to his...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: It will be within their scope to do a great deal more.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: I accept that and, on a personal level, I agree with Mr. Murphy. However, this issue has been raised with us quite a lot by business owners who have informed us that there are people they would like to take on but they cannot do so. I am not stating that there are thousands involved in this regard but it is an issue.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: It was reviewed and changed last year and I understand it has adapted to the market. From what we have heard, however, it has capacity to bring in even more investment. I do not know if sufficient work is being done to promote it. Such work may be being done but the feedback we have received indicates that more could be done.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: That is not the issue about which I am concerned. I was asking that, in the context of the Action Plan for Jobs 2014, more time and energy be devoted to it. It could be one that could bring in a good deal of money through job creation.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: To back up Deputy Lawlor's last point, we have had feedback from businesses which are interviewing for internship positions that graduates are very frustrated when they discover they must be unemployed for up to six months before qualifying for JobBridge and other schemes. We accept that these programmes are primarily designed to get people off social welfare and back into work, but people...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: The Deputy's apologies are accepted.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Action Plan for Jobs: Discussion (28 Jan 2014)

Damien English: There are several questions for you, Secretary General. Perhaps the final questions may be more suitable for the second session, but you can choose how you wish to answer them.