Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I agree the training provided should be suitable, although there are very few activities in life from which one would not profit. In my own career, having finished a degree, I wound up as a manager of a farmer's co-operative. I have pulled sheep from lorries and also thrown them into them; I have humped bags on my back and done anything and everything that has had to be done, including sweep floors. To be honest with Senator McFadden, I do not think it did me any harm; I am much better for having done it. I worked on the factory floor in a timber mill when somebody did not turn up in the morning, even though I was the manager. We did not have the money or the luxury to let the work stop just because somebody had not turned up; one just stood in the line until a replacement was found.

I am not being unreasonable. I would expect much more from myself than I would of others in a state system. However, if we are interested in the wellbeing of people, in my experience a person who is working, no matter at what he or she is working, or attending a course has a much greater chance of getting a job that the person who is sitting at home and starring at the wall. We must activate people. I would always encourage those who are unemployed, if they came to see me as an individual, not as a Minister, to take what was going. I have a line for young people, that if they are given a job sweeping the floor, they should sweep it well and they will get a better job. That might sound like kitchen sink type thinking, but I honestly believe we would do people a disservice, particularly young people, if we encouraged them not to become engaged. Of course, we should try come up with courses that suit applicants; that makes common sense. I always believe in giving people the job that suits them, but if it is a choice between any job and doing nothing, they are better off in some job than doing nothing.

A second issue concerns employment action programme, EAP, numbers. Senator McFadden may wish to take them down because they are interesting. Between January and December 2009, 86,782 persons were referred - 53,638 left the live register, while 33,000 are still on it. Of the total number, 65,600 were interviewed. Some 4,000 were placed in a job, 9,000 were placed on a FÁS programme, 1,599 were provided with education and training courses and 24,000 left the live register. Of the FÁS interviewees, 39,000 without a direct placement left the live register. As I stated, 26,000 of those who were interviewed remained on the live register. The non-attendees, those who never turned up for interview, numbered approximately 20,000, of whom 14,000 left the live register. I accept that we must be careful with the figures. We know that 60% of those on the live register receive some placement after three months. Therefore, many of them might have been in a position to get a job and their disappearance from the live register might have had nothing to do with being asked to attend for interview. Of 10,000 placed on the live register, only 4,000 remain after approximately three or four months, after which the rate of decline is very slow. It is even slower after a year. After a year we intend to see what has happened to the remaining 4,000. We will want to see how many have disappeared and if there has been an increase in the number who disappear off the live register when one asks the question a second time or if is it just a natural process. I will need to have something to offer those whom we will interview a second time.

The point in bringing all of the schemes within the remit of the Department is that I have activation funding, with unemployment programme funding, and can activate more people, particularly if I can make savings in identifying those who should not be on the live register in the first place.