Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I support the call by Senator Fitzgerald for a debate on job creation. I return to the point I made yesterday regarding the attitude of the Government to young people. I repeat that this Government is allowing young people to take the full burden of the change that has taken place in the jobs market and the full burden of adjustment and flexibility needed in our labour market. Tragically, further proof of this attitude emerged yesterday when the Youthreach programme, which is designed to look after people who leave school early and provide a plan to keep them in the education system, stated that 1,000 teenagers were unable to access its 103 centres throughout the country. Six hundred places that were to have been created over the past two years to cope with the needs of the increased number of young people looking for jobs have not been created. They have been abandoned. It is apparent to me that it is not the places that have been abandoned, rather the young people themselves.