Ann Ormonde (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State. I have sought many times for this opportunity to debate the role of FÁS, although we have had debates on the role of the agency previously. I compliment Senator Ross on bringing this to the forefront through his journalistic professionalism. There were unaccountable practices in the administration of FÁS that were a waste of taxpayers' money. It was deplorable that this should have happened and it has distracted from the real role and mission of FÁS.

I knew much about FÁS in another stage of my life when I was in the education world. Its role and vision was to identify employment blackspots. That was its core area. Then it was to match the blackspots with training and to seek opportunities for job creation. It was to identify skills to be used in other job areas. They were the core areas, as I understood. Fine work was done by many people at local level on those core areas. I compliment the 90% of the workforce of FÁS that knew what it had to do and did it.

I also believe that FÁS had not been involved in job creation in recent years, mainly because of the belief that there was full employment, and that the agency's role had changed to one of filling gaps. I say that with knowledge. It was holding courses and programmes that would not have been relevant at any time and were fillers to flesh out programmes. This was often of concern to me in recent years. Now that the construction industry has slowed down, I welcome the notion that FÁS would revisit its role and become involved with redundant apprentices, decide how to cope with them and lay on programmes for them. That could be done simply and I hope FÁS does so through its training and education programmes.

The Minister of State said:

In addressing the issue of redundancies, FÁS liaises with other relevant agencies such as Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, city and county enterprise boards and the Department of Social and Family Affairs. It also works closely with the agencies to identify and support individuals who wish to start their own business.

I welcome that but it is extraordinary that in talking about a training agency, there is no mention of education. I do not understand why city and county vocational education committees are not in a position to help out at a time like this. Programmes should be co-ordinated. I accept that FÁS organises apprenticeships and I welcome the new approach to off-the-job continuation of programmes and training. This is desirable. However, many of these young people left school at 15 years of age because they did not want to go further. Perhaps that was five years ago and now that they are more mature, there may be opportunities for them to revisit the education world. They may wish to revisit other upskilling areas rather than the crafts in which they have been trained. We are here to discuss rethinking, restructuring and reforming FÁS because we want to see the vision for the future of the agency. It must change. We are into new information communications and other technologies and research and development. The job will change and the future of work will change. There will be more flexibility in the job scene. Has FÁS thought of these elements? The here and now is very important in terms of those who lost their jobs and those with low skills. We must upskill and reskill them and examine the opportunities.

The Minister of State referred to the consultation process, the scale of redundancies and the skills profile of employees. He also talked about the number of years they have worked and the level of education. He brought in the word "education." I would like to see the people who will do the consultation linking in with the guidance counsellors of the education system in the communities. Wherever there is a FÁS centre those involved should liaise with the local community schools or vocational schools. They will have a golden opportunity to link up programmes. One module of the programme could be done in the school and one in the FÁS area. Let us have more global thinking because that is where the future of work lies. It is not just a matter of retraining or upskilling; there must be more to it.

We have a golden opportunity. We have discovered what went wrong with FÁS. We acknowledge great work is being done on the ground there. We will get it right. The Minister acknowledges that. Let us return to the core and the mission of FÁS, retrain, liaise with the educational system, bring rounded people into work and not just fulfil separate education and training roles. We are talking about global thinking and a global concept. We should be able to do this, ensure continuity of the training programme and bring it into the steadfast way of how we deal with the future of the world at work.