Lisa McDonald (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister to the House. I also welcome this reforming legislation. In the three Bills he has put before the House in the past eight months he has proven that he is a man of vision and someone who has an idea of where we need to go to reform the system in the places where it requires reform. This legislation is another example of this.

The Bill deals primarily with the transfer of the functions of FÁS to the Department of Social Protection. This is a tangible example of reform. I accept it is overdue and something that is so obvious it should have been done a very long time ago. Perhaps if FÁS had been in the remit of the Department of Social Protection, some of the waste that happened in FÁS would not have happened to the same extent because it would have been part of a bigger picture and a larger budget, but that budget would have been protected, as would have the people who required and continue to require assistance from FÁS. FÁS has had such a battering and hammering in the media that possibly we need to look at changing its name and changing some of its functions to modernise it. Now that it has been transferred to the Department of Social Protection, the next step will be to see what other reforms can be made to the organisation.

It is vital we look at the training programmes. I fully agree that not everyone can seek or wants to seek university or college training. At the same time, they can get value from the training provided by FÁS. This was shown in the last boom when the training of construction workers was hugely beneficial to our economy and played a very important role. We need to move to the next level and see where training is required and where people who do not want to pursue or are not suitable to university education can have a role to play in the island of Ireland, in our lives and in the economy. With all the quite necessary economic resolutions, Bills and debates, we tend to forget there are humans at the end and beginning of this who need to be taken into consideration.

I regret that Senator McFadden believes Fine Gael does not have enough time to make amendments and therefore she must oppose the Bill, because she has spoken very highly about many of the measures contained in it and has indicated support for them. I suppose it is fair to say that the Minister is a man in a hurry. He has much reform to make and the fact that this is the third Bill in eight months proves the Minister is someone who needs to get his ideas down on paper very quickly and get them into legislation. This strikes me as what is going on in his life and in his public service as a Minister. On the one hand, the Opposition states the pace of change is too slow and complains about the fact it took so long to make these changes in FÁS and in the rent supplement, but on the other hand it states not enough time has been given for amendments. One cannot have it both ways.