Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I acknowledge the work of the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, in this area. I commend Senator Reilly who has been very vocal on this issue for some time and I am happy to see she has tabled her motion here today. Money is tight, that is for sure, and the reason it is tight is because Fianna Fáil was in power recently. I have great respect for Senator Wilson, but it is difficult when one is on the Government side to hear talk of our cutting budgets which we do not want to cut and very difficult decisions being made because of the situation we are in.

I am not one who subscribes to constantly reminding Fianna Fáil of what it did wrong but that is the reality.

There is no disputing the fact that youth unemployment has reached crisis level in most EU states with more than one in five young Europeans currently out of work. Currently, Ireland has the fifth highest rate of youth unemployment in the eurozone after Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. However, it must be noted, as stated by Senator Marie Moloney, that the latest CSO figures are positive in the sense that the number of youth unemployed dropped by almost 9,000 in 2012 on the same time in 2011. As others have said this drop can be partially attributed, unfortunately, to emigration but it attests to the success of initiatives such as Youthreach, the vocational training opportunities scheme and the back to education allowance programme. What is not in dispute is that the uphill battle against the scourge of youth unemployment remains. In light of this today's announcement that Cloud computing firm Citrix is to create 50 new jobs in Dublin following unprecedented customer demand is timely. The importance of training young people in the new wave technology cannot be overstressed. As we are all aware, Dublin has become a major hub for technology companies in Europe. Facebook, Google and LinkedIn all base themselves here. Other home-grown successes in this space include Paddy Power.

As I highlighted when I spoke previously on this issue, the major challenge facing the technology industry is the shortage of graduates. The skills shortage is the greatest impediment to business growth in the digital sector. We need to address this issue as a matter of urgency. We must ensure that the new technology universities have IT skills to the forefront. I wish to reiterate a point I have made previously that we consider having conversation courses in all relevant IT skills such as apt development and programming. This is equally vital at second level. The time has come when Ireland Inc needs to grasp the nettle and introduce a proper IT and programming optional syllabus at junior and leaving certificate levels. By the time it comes to college most people feel IT is not an option because they do not know enough about it or the succession to third level is often reduced to only IT hobbyists whereas it should be an open door for anybody who wishes to pursue it. These measures would greatly assist in killing two birds with the one stone - the technology skills shortage and the youth unemployment crisis.

A fiscal response to the plague of youth unemployment although helpful is not enough. There must also be a social response. I welcome the Government initiatives being rolled out including the JobsPlus initiative which has been designed to encourage employers to recruit long-term unemployed people. Under this scheme, the State will pay approximately €1 of every €4 it costs the employer to recruit a person from the live register. Momentum, which is part of the Government's Action Plan for Jobs initiative, will support the provision of free education and training projects to allow 6,500 long-term jobseekers to gain skills and access work opportunities in identified growing sectors. More than 1,250 of these places are assigned specifically for under 25s. An additional 10,000 places this year across a range of programmes have also been made available by JobBridge, Tús and community employment. About a quarter of these places are expected to be taken up by unemployed young people.

The original Action Plan for Jobs sets out a target for 100,000 net new jobs to be created by 2016, many of which will be filled by young people. We have to hope that this target will be met. It is encouraging that the Department of Finance anticipates that the overall unemployment rate will fall from 14.7% in 2012 to 12.3% in 2016. This could mean that youth unemployment, which fell by 30% in 2012, will fall to 24% or less in 2016.

I believe that the final adoption in February of the EU recommendation on implementing a youth guarantee offers the potential to make a key difference to the lives of millions of young people across Europe and Ireland. We are all in agreement that a central part of the Government's strategy must be a high quality youth guarantee scheme that provides young people with an offer of employment education, particularly in the IT and engineering apprenticeship or a traineeship within four months of becoming unemployed. I applaud the Government's progress to date while acknowledging the huge amount of work yet to be done especially in providing and encouraging training in the technology sector where the creation of another 15,000 jobs is a strong possibility.

I commend Senator Katherine Reilly for bringing the motion to the House.