John Carty (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Kelleher. I am sorry my constituency colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, left some moments ago. I would have been delighted to have the opportunity to welcome him to the House this evening.

I welcome the tabling of this motion by Senators Boyle and de Búrca because it is very important at this time. As we all know, due to global recession, there has been a huge rise in the number of people unemployed. According to the Quarterly National Household Survey, the number of people in employment has fallen to 1,965,600, which represents an annual decrease of 158,000. This is the first time since 2005 that the number of people in employment has fallen below 2 million. The sectors of the economy that have experienced the sharpest decline in full-time employment in the past year are the construction industry, which has seen a fall in the order of 77,000, the wholesale and retail trade, the motor vehicle repair sector and industrial sectors. However, each of these sectors experienced a small increase in the number in part-time employment.

I am delighted that the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, stated the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Social and Family Affairs are working closely together to ensure appropriate responses to meet the up-skilling needs of those who are losing their jobs or facing uncertain employment prospects. In his speech, the Minister of State mentioned quite a number of measures the various Departments are adopting. He referred to training, the employer-based redundant apprentice rotation scheme and new institutes of technology training programmes for 700 redundant apprentices. An additional 400 places provided in the April budget will increase the number of places on community employment schemes to 22,700 this year.

The Green Party Senators will be delighted to hear that a company called BioSpark, a newly formed joint venture between Imperative Energy and Sustainable BioPolymers, has announced its intention to invest €40 million in the development of a next-generation bio-processing research, innovation and manufacturing centre in Claremorris, County Mayo. It will create 180 new high value jobs within the local and regional economy with the realistic potential to grow to 300 jobs within three years.

Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Oireachtas Sub-committee on Job Creation through the Use of Renewable Energy Resources where Joe O'Carroll and Peter Doyle of Imperative Energy gave a very good presentation on how to create employment through renewable energy. A most interesting debate took place. I welcome those people coming to do that kind of work because it shows there are initiatives and that the Government is prepared to facilitate and help them.

The company will have a 20,000 tonne per annum bioprocessing facility in Claremorris, state-of-the-art laboratory facilities for bioprocessing research and innovation and 17 commercial units to house a cluster of related business centres. This will be of great benefit to south Mayo and east Galway.