Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary. To tackle unemployment we must retain and create jobs, which should be the top priority for Government. The haemorrhaging of jobs has been the most significant contributor to the state of the public finances. The Government has been too focused on the issues of banking and public finances to the relative neglect of the unemployment issue. Training and education initiatives must be prioritised to enhance the skills of those in employment and increasing the employability of the unemployed. There has been much fanfare about the smart economy but little concrete action. It is only through reviving economic activity and reducing unemployment that the fiscal crisis can be properly addressed.

Ireland must effect a major economic transition from a property-dependent economy to an export-led economy. We must build strong indigenous firms as well as attracting foreign direct investment. It means putting in place infrastructure that complements the knowledge economy and ensuring investment is channelled towards enterprise and infrastructure. Crucially, it means investing in people at all skill levels. The knowledge economy will not be built just by talking about it. We need concrete action to build up the firms we have and support job creation with realistic economy-wide and sectoral strategies.

Labour is proposing to establish a jobs fund to support a new jobs strategy. This fund would not be allocated through the conventional Estimates system. Instead, Departments and agencies would be required to submit business cases to a Cabinet task force which would evaluate them and distribute resources accordingly. Measures to be supported by the fund would include additional resources to support enterprise, sectoral development strategies, a major skills and work experience drive, and fast-tracked and high priority capital projects. Obviously the issue of costs, as highlighted by an bord snip nua, must be addressed, but the overriding concern is the need to support enterprise and enhance employment creation. Certainly, there is a requirement for better analysis of the outcomes of spending programmes. Money must not be wasted.

Ireland has suffered considerable reputational damage as a result of the banking crisis but still offers important attractions to overseas investors. These must be preserved, including the 12.5% corporation tax rate. We might even consider reducing this tax rate as one of the previous Senators suggested.

Greater attention must be focused, however, on the development of indigenous firms in high value added activities. Enterprise supports provided through State agencies have a vital role to play in helping firms to start up and grow. They provide assistance and knowledge at critical phases in the life of a firm. When the system is functioning at its best, a firm can draw on a range of formal and informal resources, including contact with other firms which can share knowledge and experience. The role of the enterprise support agencies is also vital in understanding market conditions and demanding improved performance in return for assistance. The enterprise support agencies will function best when they operate in a coherent network that emphasises the importance of market knowledge.

Merging the Film Board into Enterprise Ireland, as proposed by an bord snip nua, for example, risks the loss of specialised expertise with minimal savings in return. Enterprise strategy should be focused not on the withdrawal of supports but on their extension and development. The criteria for support should be extended. These would include, for example, support in certain circumstances for import substituting firms as well as those with an export focus. The range of interventions should also be expanded.

The employer job PRSI incentive scheme is welcome but I question the need to restrict the scheme to people who have been on the live register for at least six months. If a person has lost his or her job, why apply this restriction? Will the Minister of State reconsider this requirement? I have mentioned to him the length of time — currently 22 weeks — for unemployed people to have their application for benefit processed. Although I risk being accused of going on about it, it is vital to resolve the matter as quickly as possible.

Greater focus and resources should be placed on using the county and city enterprise boards to support small business start-ups. The eligibility criteria for support from the county and city enterprise boards should be re-examined to promote activity.

An bord snip nua highlighted a rapid rise in spending on science technology and innovation and the inadequacy of formal evaluation of this spending. It does not provide adequate justification for its proposal to centralise and cut spending in this area. This approach risks an excessive targeting of resources on a limited number of areas. We must maintain investment in a diverse range of knowledge areas and enhance the capacity of the system to develop commercial applications for research activities. This should be built into the STI funding system.

It is also important to develop sectoral strategies to be pursued by relevant agencies. The maintenance of the Irish Film Board, for example, should form part of an overall strategy for developing jobs in creative industries. Labour has also recently published proposals for developing so-called green jobs, to which I will refer later. It is important that short-sighted proposals in the an bord snip nua report are not implemented. For example, the suggestion that tourism marketing budgets be cut is particularly ill-advised given the fall-off in numbers coming to Ireland and our loss of market share, especially from Britain. Rather than cutting marketing spend in the UK, there is a strong case for expanding it.

The jobs fund would be available to support sectoral strategies in a number of areas, with particular emphasis on food, tourism, creative industries and green jobs. In its document entitled Just the Job, the Labour Party has set out a series of initiatives to provide training, educational and work experience opportunities for those without work, including an earn and learn scheme that keeps people in employment while upskilling, a graduate and apprentice work placement scheme for 30,000 young people, reducing the qualifying period for the back to education and the back to work enterprise allowances, a tax-back scheme to fund full-time study, mobilising further education colleges and institutes of technology to respond to demand for retraining, a skills exchange to help maximise the expertise available for retraining, and additional resources for literacy programmes.

Throughout the bubble years there was a rapid expansion in the scale of the public capital programme. Economic circumstances have now changed, and there is a need for a re-assessment of investment priorities. A new national development plan should be drawn up based on a fresh assessment of key economic and social investment needs. This should be explicitly linked to the requirements of enterprise strategy. Given the fall in tender prices across the economy there is scope for a substantial reduction in the capital programme without affecting the volume of activity. We must support capital investment projects that can be rolled out quickly. These should include a major schools building and prefab replacement programme, an additional allocation to the warmer homes scheme as part of the compensating measures accompanying the carbon tax, and other initiatives supporting training needs, including capital provision for further education.

It is internationally accepted that renewable energy projects have the potential to create new employment and replace jobs in traditional industries that are unsustainable. In Germany, for example, the number of jobs in the renewable sector is now greater than in car manufacturing. Initiatives aimed at taking advantage of these opportunities must be put in place immediately. Earlier this year, Bord na Móna announced the creation of 300 sustainable clean energy jobs over the next five years. The jobs will be created in green energy, resource recovery and environmental solutions using innovative green technologies. That is the future for job creation in Ireland. The future can be good for Ireland but we must exploit the opportunity and make it happen.

Key to success for the indigenous sector is credit flow from the banking sector and despite what the banks say when they appear before committees of these Houses, the evidence on the is that this is not happening. I heard what the Minister of State said earlier but greater pressure must be brought to bear on banks to release the essential credit to viable businesses.

I want to raise some questions regarding the former SR Technics workers who are seeking funding under the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund. Has the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment provided the additional information to the Commission as requested? Why was the application to the globalisation fund made so late and not straight away when they were let go? Can the Government provide a bridging loan to the DIT in the meantime until the funding comes through? Will the matter be resolved before the workers' jobseeker's benefit runs out on 3 April 2010 when will they face a means test for jobseeker's allowance?