Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael)

The Leas-Chathaoirleach might remind me when I have two minutes remaining.

I welcome the Minister of State. This is an important debate but it should be a rolling debate and not only up to the end of this term. We should continue to debate any incentives that will help employment.

As an Opposition spokesperson I will always give credit where due. I welcome this initiative by Government but as my colleagues have said already, this proposal was put to Government by the Fine Gael Party over 19 months ago as a positive incentive to create employment. However, I am glad the Government has adopted that position.

Fine Gael has many more positive proposals to which Government should listen. Senator Brady spoke a great deal of sense. I agree with 99% of what he said regarding the over-burden of regulation, especially for small businesses and companies operating here for many years which are struggling in the current climate.

I too met a restaurateur two weeks ago in Waterford who was almost tearing his hair out. He employs seven people, all of whom are very happy with their employment terms. He wants to remain open at weekends to try to attract people into the city and support the tourism trade but he is over-burdened with regulation. He has NERA, the employment rights authority, breathing down his neck and sending him all kinds of threatening letters. The man does not have the time to correspond with all the information coming to him.

I have written to the Minister on his behalf to outline this man's concerns, and the concerns of many like him. The very least State agencies should do is back off those people who are trying to stimulate employment and growth in the various cities and towns throughout the country. These agencies need to be hauled in somewhat because it appears they are trying to justify their existence. Many of them were recommended for the snip in the Colm McCarthy report. They are going to great lengths now to show their muscle but all they are doing is putting these businesses out of business.

The man I refer to has told me that if heavy pressure comes on him he will have to close the business and let go the seven people he employs. That will be another restaurant closed and boarded up in a city, which is disgraceful. We must start listening to these people who are working hard at the coalface to stimulate our economy.

There are other related charges that have been increasing in the past. The local authorities have done their best to keep the rates down but Government charges have been rising while all other charges are dropping. I agree with Senator Brady and with Senator Feargal Quinn that we need to have a competitive economy so that businesses and entrepreneurship are not smothered.

My family has employed people over many years in a small business. My father employed almost 20 people in a small leather factory; my brother has a small sheet metal manufacturing company that exports as well as creating product for this country. We cannot neglect manufacturing and we cannot give up on manufacturing in this country. Competitiveness is one of the biggest issues but there are areas of innovation and new product development and if the colleges and third level institutions work with small businesses and assist and support them and if there is a better co-operation between Departments and support agencies, we can rescue the situation for manufacturing. I, for one, believe we should not give up in this regard.

I have been vocal with regard to youth unemployment. Highly qualified young graduates have very few job prospects. It is important to try to offer those people some credible reason for getting out of bed in the morning, to go to work and to put their good talents and education to use. We need to find positive ways of engaging those young people.

Fine Gael has proposed initiatives such as internships with the likes of local authorities, the OPW or other State agencies so young engineers, quantity surveyors or others can be given the necessary work experience. This is a win-win situation. Such a scheme takes them off the dole queues, gives them a reason to get up in the morning and to put their talents to good use. We have projects such as schools and community development facilities to build and also infrastructural facilities. It should be possible to introduce some kind of flexible system in the employment legislation to allow people and agencies such as the OPW and the local authorities to take on these young people.

I will give an example for the Minister of State. Significant numbers of local authority houses are boarded up because local authorities do not have the resources to refurbish them and people on the housing lists are using rent supplement in the private rental sector. There must be a way we can find to engage with FÁS to take apprentices on the dole out of that situation and put them in with a master craftsman who is also on the dole who could lead a team of apprentices to refurbish these houses. This would be a very simple exercise that could get people off the dole and back to work. It is a win-win because local authority houses would be refurbished - they do not have the resources to do so - and people would be taken off the housing lists with a saving on rent supplement. This is how we need to think. We need to think of tangible ways to get our young people off the dole queues and into productive employment again. This is the way it has to be. I appeal to the Minister of State to carry the message she is hearing in this House because, as Senator Quinn said, there are good signals from all sides and we are trying to be helpful because there are people who support Fine Gael as much as people who support Fianna Fáil, who are unemployed. If we work together we can certainly help.

I wish to raise the issue of older redundant workers. In Waterford city alone, more than 600 people have been made redundant in the past year from Waterford Crystal and many more were made redundant from ABB, a transformer factory that closed in Waterford and a pharmaceutical factory, TEVA, which will have 315 redundancies this summer. Many of the people employed there are older and may not want to go back to college. The only courses these workers are being offered are fork-lift training or computer licence courses through FÁS. We need to be more flexible with these people and get them back into tangible work such as craft work or landscaping or some options to give them an avenue and an incentive to go back to education and back to employment. Not everybody wants to go back to do a third level degree. We need to come up with practical measures that allow people who may have left school at 15 or 16 years of age -----