Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I thank Senator Colm Burke for raising this matter. In June 2010 the Department submitted an application to the EU for European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, EGF, co-financed assistance for almost 9,000 redundant construction workers. The workers were made redundant between 1 July 2009 and 31 March 2010 and were individually identified as is required to meet the conditions of the fund. This was done through either official data held on redundancy payments or from FÁS apprenticeship records. The EU subsequently required this application to be divided into three separate applications covering specific industry sub-sectors. This exercise, which involved a huge and complex exercise in data collation across a number of external bodies such as the Central Statistics Office and FÁS, resulted in the submission of three revised applications in February 2011.

As the Senator knows, the EGF approval process is a lengthy one involving the EU budgetary authorities at Commission, Council and Parliament levels. This resulted in the Irish applications not being finally approved until November 2011. This left only six months for the completion of the EGF programme. As I pointed out to Commissioner László Andor when he visited Ireland recently, a feature of the EGF process that is often criticised by member states is that the finite implementation period of 24 months commences upon submission of the application rather than upon its subsequent approval, when the member state finally can be assured that the EU money will be made available.

This was a significant factor in these construction cases where very large amounts of money were at stake that would have otherwise fallen to the Irish Exchequer to cover had it ultimately been decided that the EU money would not be made available. However, it is important to stress that Irish interventions have been taking place in support of EGF-eligible construction workers as far back as the first redundancies in July 2009. Until the receipt of EU funding last December, these measures were funded exclusively through national resources.

Since taking office, I have ensured that preparations to implement supports for these workers were accelerated and supports were ready to be provided as soon as possible after the EU decision was made. My Department chaired an interdepartmental and agency steering group to speed up this process and put in place a dedicated EGF construction contact centre and technical support group to facilitate the redundant workers in accessing supports. This dedicated contact centre is based in Limerick and mostly comprises staff who were involved in the delivery of the EGF programme for Dell workers. Measures will continue to be delivered right up until the closure of the three EGF programmes on 9 June 2012. These measures include career guidance, further education and training courses, apprenticeship progression, third level education programmes and enterprise supports.

EGF funds of €35.7 million were received by the Government on 29 December 2011. My Department estimates that over €20 million worth of nationally funded EGF interventions have already been provided for the commencement of at least 4,500 interventions in the areas of guidance, training, apprenticeship progression and third level courses. Following the EU approval, letters of notification of a number of additional EGF services issued to 8,779 redundant construction workers on 19 December 2011. These new services included tailored VEC career planning courses and EGF training grants, enabling the widest choice of non-State funded training and education opportunities to be availed of by the redundant workers, thus giving the workers a huge degree of autonomy in using dedicated training grants to access training that they deemed necessary for their own careers advancement.

Since this notification and up until 27 January 2012, the latest available data indicates, as Senator Burke pointed out, that an additional 452 eligible individuals accessed the services of the new EGF construction contact centre, which provides telephone and online information and supports access to professional career and occupational guidance. A dedicated EGF website, egf.ie, also went live in December and provides further information on the EGF construction programmes as well as an online application process for the EGF training grant scheme. By 27 January, it is estimated that some 275 persons had accessed or were in the process of accessing these new interventions. The Irish authorities continue to encourage eligible redundant construction workers to avail of the wide array of EGF-related services available to them.

It is important to point out the aim is not to simply maximise EU co-financing but to provide appropriate and tailored interventions to this cohort of redundant workers so as to maximise their re-employability. I also want to point out that, since I assumed this ministry, I have initiated a review of our previous EGF applications across the Dell group, the SR Technics group and the Waterford Crystal group to find where we succeeded and, in areas where we certainly did not succeed, how we can best benefit from this EGF programme. That review will be concluded shortly and we will use the information gleaned from it, and also from communicating with worker representatives across those three entities and trying to extract from them their experiences, both positive and negative, of how the funds have in the past been administered, to guide us in making future applications. It is important to note that the first application under this Government will be for the TalkTalk workers in Waterford. I hope the standard of that application and the level of research carried out before lodging the application will be such that it will make the guidance and training delivered much more meaningful and helpful for those seeking to access it.

Senator Burke also noted there was a need across the further education and training sectors to upskill or update the training courses we provide. I concur wholeheartedly with that opinion. That is exactly what we are setting out to do with Solas, which will ensure the training we are providing is up to the minute, responds to the needs of learners and trainees and also, perhaps more importantly, responds to the needs of the labour market and to industry in general. We are and will be carrying out extensive research both nationally and at regional level as to where job opportunities and labour market shortages will arise. We will be re-orienting and training and further education opportunities so they can respond in a meaningful manner to those labour market shortages and to the needs of the learners accessing both training and further education opportunities.