Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

Cuirim fáile roimh an Aire Stáit go dtí an Seanad chun an obair thábhachtach seo a phlé. Molaim Páirtí an Chomhaontais Ghlais as an rún seo a ardú. Tá sé oiriúnach an ábhar a ardú ar an clár mar is ábhar tábhachtach é.

I compliment the Green Party, particularly Senators Dan Boyle and Déirdre de Búrca, on putting forward this motion. It is essential that the Oireachtas, the Government and society generally focus on the issue of unemployment, which is the human downside to the current economic recession. It is shattering for people who have spent their lives working and who are at a stage in life where they have commitments to their families to find themselves without the resources to meet their commitments. Like many others here, I am lucky to have gone through life so far without experiencing the blight of unemployment. In the earlier years of my political life, in the 1970s, I worked at local government level during a period of high unemployment which people found soul-destroying. The problem was even more acute in the 1980s when we had a very high unemployment rate. The effect on the unemployed and their families was devastating.

The Government has been seriously challenged by the rapidity of the global economic downturn and its effects on Ireland. The downturn is multifaceted in that there is a serious fiscal deficit which commands the attention of Government and a banking crisis which could lead to a total collapse of the economy. The economy generally and unemployment specifically need increasing attention while we also try to get to grips with the other areas. As we have learned from past experience, when people become unemployed and are in that position for two or three years, a dependency mentality takes over and people become unemployable. We must be mindful of that.

In that regard, I welcome a number of the initiatives taken by the Government in this area, particularly the improved FÁS employment services. Hopefully, FÁS will measure up to the challenge that confronts it and provide job search assistance and training places. The number of training places has been doubled by the Government. I understand the number of places has been increased to 128,000 under the FÁS training initiatives.

The employer-based redundant apprentice rotation was essential. Many Members would have had representations from people nearing the end of their apprenticeships who were finding it difficult to hold their employment. It was essential that those who had put in a number of years to pursue a career would be given the opportunity to finish that training. The training programmes within the institutes and the employment schemes through which we now provide 400 additional places are an important stopgap measure but they also provide the completion of very worthwhile projects to communities. I know of people who were on such schemes in the past and wished to remain on them when their term finished because it gave them a certain dignity - the dignity that comes from working and earning one's living.

There are also the placement programmes and the employment retention scheme which was recently announced and which is under discussion with the social partners. This is important but it is a complicated area. It is imperative that the application of the scheme, when it is finalised, does not give rise to displacement and that we do not end up creating unfair competition for employers who are struggling at present and who obviously need to operate on a level playing field. That is not to say I am opposed to this scheme. There are merits to it but we need to be very careful in how we implement it and, perhaps more importantly, in how we monitor it, particularly how we monitor any downside effects that might arise from it.

There are other areas to which the Government needs to turn its attention. In that regard, I am glad the Minister of State, Deputy Kelleher, is present because he is familiar with much of this area, particularly the area of employment regulation. Over the years, much has been introduced and perhaps imposed in the area of employment regulation, with much of this coming from social partnership. I would be the first to recognise that we owe much to social partnership. Particularly in the late 1980s when it was established and when we were in serious economic distress, it was very much a forum for assisting the process of coming through that and laying the foundations for a better economy during the 1990s and particularly in this decade, from which we have benefitted.

I ask that areas such as the regulatory authorities be examined. I attended a comhairle ceantair meeting on Monday last. The Minister of State might be interested to know the proprietor of the premises we were in had received a visit from health and safety officials that day. While it is right they are doing their job, he told me it was the first time in 30 years he had been visited by anyone from the Health and Safety Authority, which raises some questions.

The minimum wage will have to be examined. I am of the view that it is an impediment to employment. Generally, wages and salaries in our economy are too high and I understand some economists now advising the Government suggest they are too high by a third. A survey carried out by the University of Glasgow last year also indicated that this is the case. We need to look at this area because if we do not, the downstream effect will be increased unemployment. It is better that people have the dignity of work, even if they are working at a lower rate, than that they are unemployed with a notional figure of a minimum wage which is no longer applicable to them simply because employers can not afford to pay it. We need to be pragmatic in the way we approach this issue.

Social welfare levels are being cited to me as an issue. I know of employers who are prepared to take on staff but they cannot get them because they would only be marginally better off than they were on social welfare. We encountered this issue previously and it needs to be carefully considered because we do not want abuses to arise.

All Government policies in the economic area should be proofed against their effects on employment or unemployment, depending on which way one wants to look at it. This should be the priority in everything we do because the worst possible effect of the economic downturn is unemployment.