Ann Ormonde (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Mansergh, to the House. We have been provided with another opportunity to debate the economic downturn and increase in unemployment. The main question is where we go from here. I want to address the two areas of overhauling FÁS and the back to education schemes. I know many who have lost their jobs. While we are having this debate, many families are discussing how they will find information on back to education schemes.

We must examine the areas where the largest job losses have occurred. The retail sector has been the hardest hit. Many of the young girls and men who worked in the retail sector may have dropped out of school because the money was more attractive. Now they realise that with no job, they also have no qualifications. We must look at the positives in this and create opportunities in the second-chance and third-chance education sector to help those who find themselves in this position. We need front-line staff in FÁS such as placement officers to reach out to these young people and give them the information on back to education schemes. The vocational education committees know the pulses of their local communities and should also be involved. These and the county and city managers must put their heads together to decide how best they can help locally. We are not into the larger global analysis yet. We need to help people with the opportunities in their localities.

We cannot allow people to become gloomy and depressed. Confidence must be motivated. We must examine how best we can integrate a system between the front-line Ministers for Education and Science and Enterprise, Trade and Employment and FÁS in identifying the jobs in the future and ensuring the skills are in place to attract them. The courses we have had in the past may not be relevant to the future. We must have a change of outlook and philosophy in this area. Within the next few weeks we should begin asking chief executive officers, who have great power within their communities, and city and county managers how they can provide opportunities for local people in their areas. FÁS must be made leave its cosy setting to help people change their outlook and to build confidence. We have to motivate people so that they have confidence in the future. I want to help those most in need.

We rose to similar challenges in the past and we will get it right again as long as we change our gloom and doom attitude. I am weary of that attitude which is a rehearsal of the old mantra that everything is other people's fault. We have to look at the global picture. I am proud to be Irish and to do what I can to promote prosperity in the future. Let us give confidence to the young and the not so young. I am not interested in big developers or the bankers because they are doomed in my book. I want to restore confidence to the ordinary people who have worked hard to build up this country by giving them opportunities for placements and further education. They need our help in this because they cannot manage it alone. Professional support is needed in terms of placement officers, guidance counsellors and educators. We need to flood the market with these professionals so that the people who are sitting in their armchairs and wondering where they will go next will be given opportunities and information. All I ask is that we motivate people. We have the capacity and the knowledge and we will have the resources to do so.

Capital investment is important in terms of helping small businessmen and builders to develop employment opportunities in their local communities. Small is beautiful at this point in time. I ask the Minister of State to consider some of the suggestions I and other speakers have made this evening. We are all singing the same tune to motivate people for the future.