Geraldine Feeney (Fianna Fail)

It may help and everybody would get in if we stuck to such a rule. The point I rise to make has already been made briefly by Senator Hannigan. It relates to having a debate with the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment on young trainee apprentices who find themselves in an unfortunate situation. There is not a town or village in this country that does not have a young carpenter, plumber, mechanic or whoever in training, some of them almost finished. I am delighted to see the ESB has undertaken to finish the training of some of the young electricians. However, there is a large cohort of trainees with nowhere to go. Their contracts with their employers have ceased because the contractors have no work. It appears to be a no-brainer that FÁS should take them on. They do not want to be on the dole. Can they not go back into FÁS and in some of its big workshops knock down walls, build them up again, hang doors, put on skirting boards and do whatever practical side of the training they would have done in the workforce? They are in limbo at present. If there was work abroad they could not go because they have no papers to say they are trained. It is time the Minister came in to open that debate.