Ann Ormonde (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State and wish him well now, more so than ever, in these challenging times. We are discussing the increase in unemployment as a result of the downturn in the economy. Yesterday, we spoke at length on the budget and we will have an opportunity this afternoon to discuss aspects of the budget relevant to this subject.

I am not here to do a bashing exercise, so to speak, nor will I ever speak in that role. However, all that some colleagues can do is engage in such a bashing exercise without doing any constructive thinking of their own. They think they have the answers but if they have, why are they not in government? We are doing our best to stabilise the economy, a difficult job at this time. There are no guarantees that this is the right way forward but the budget is helping to stabilise the economy. We are here to face up to how we might help those who have become unemployed. As the Minister of State said, according to the August statistics there are more than 240,000 on the live register. That is a considerable increase and is very disappointing. It appears that the principal fall-off is in the construction industry and the credit crisis has also come into its own. We had extraordinary growth and cannot expect it to be rosy in the garden always. The challenge is there for us to face.

The role of FÁS will be very important in how we handle unemployment. Although the organisation has got a bad press in the past it now has a golden opportunity to address that and rise to the challenge of handling the new situation. It is not about upskilling, a word that I hate. Upskilling means saying to a person, "You were good at plumbing, now we will put you into something else". I would not like FÁS to think along those lines in the future but would prefer to see in its programmes and modules research into where future jobs lie. There will be a new emphasis and it will not be on the construction industry but on climate change and in the area of energy. Underground cabling has become a new phenomenon in construction. There is also the area of child care and the entire service industry. Technologies are coming forward and the question is whether FÁS will be able to handle the research needed and how it can apply such research to the live register.

A great variety of job skills exists that was required once but is no longer. How can we change the thinking of FÁS? How do we interview everybody on the live register in order to find out their position and where they are going? How do we do the joined-up thinking between the Department of Education and Science, the Minister of State's Department and that which deals with the live register? How can we work in a way that will tap into this for the individual ? I am a guidance counsellor. How do I know how to reach out to that person, interview him or her, at a guidance or a counselling level, in order to give the person an opportunity to move from A to B? That is where we must step in.

The Minister of State's speech was very good. He said that these areas are being examined. FÁS will continue to be involved. The Department of Education and Science, which deals with the VEC schools, has a golden opportunity to engage in joined-up thinking with FÁS at local level. The Minister of State mentioned community employment schemes. There is an opportunity to pursue those and to see how people can be brought back to life-long learning programmes such as those to which the Minister of State referred. There must be research into opportunities for the future. Perhaps many who are plumbers, plasterers or roofers will not wish to continue those trades. What might their inclinations be? Where might they be placed?

FÁS has a role. If it wishes to redeem itself it has expert professional people in its own organisation. Let them come out from behind closed doors, examine the live register, do their interviewing and their placements and go to the VECs which have equally good back-to-work and education programmes. These organisations can link up in order to help those people, boost their morale and provide opportunities. It can happen.

We must introduce flexibility. Work may be a morning or afternoon affair because the day of the 9-5 job is over. We have an opportunity to look at the areas in which FÁS can help in a significant way. There must be information centres. I do not know where I would go if I were on the live register at this time. If I were told that my job was to go in the morning how would I know where to go? FÁS must tell those who are unemployed it is there to help them and that it will work with the Department of Education and Science on its programmes. In that way education and training can gel together. One does not go without the other although we isolated them in the past. We had education but training was not mixed with it. That has changed and the thinking of the future must change too.

We must employ global thinking in order to re-employ those who do not wish to go back into roofing or plumbing, who want to change their way of life and have the opportunity to do so through FÁS's research and modular programmes, and morning programmes. Whatever way FÁS wishes to implement this it now has a greater opportunity than in the past.