David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend the youngest Oireachtas Member, Senator Reilly, for bringing forward this important motion and for her excellent articulation of the issues affecting young people. It was a very strong performance. I read an article in one of the national newspapers today and it mentioned an exchange yesterday in the Seanad, which was unfortunate. The same article referred to the fact that the vast majority of people outside the Seanad would not be able to name a handful of Senators. The media is partly responsible for that because it does not cover many of the excellent debates we have here in the Seanad. In this case a Senator organised a conference that was a mix of organisations representing young people from this State and Europe to come together and discuss ideas on how we can create jobs, assist young people, support the Government on the youth guarantee and ensure we have the best possible model for people, and to take those ideas into the Seanad and have a discussion with the Minister. As the Minister can see, the members of the media are not interested in that, but that is their problem. We will get on with our work in this House. I commend Senator Reilly for bringing forward this very important motion.

Despite the fact that the Minister got off to a bad start in her contribution, I strongly agree with and support her conclusions where she says the youth guarantee in Ireland will make a real difference to the many talented young people. She spoke about young people being innocent victims of the boom-to-bust legacy and that this has been exacerbated by a lack of opportunities to match their ambition. We would all agree with that. We want to be able to ensure when our graduates come out of colleges with ambition, the opportunities are there for them. That is not the case for a lot of young people.

The Minister mentioned emigration and it is a blot on all of our copybooks that it is affecting another generation of young Irish people, graduates of colleges at a high cost to their families and the taxpayers of this State who put people through colleges to get the education they want. They have the talent, energy, enthusiasm, but unfortunately, for many of them the only opportunities are in America, New Zealand, Australia, the UK or wherever, and not here in this country. Anything we can collectively do to provide opportunities for those young people is to be welcomed.

The Minister mentioned apprenticeships. We need to fundamentally re-examine this because, unfortunately a perception, a prejudice even, about apprenticeships has built up in this country. Some people and employers look down on apprenticeships and do not value them. The Minister acknowledged the problems we had in the apprenticeship schemes during the Celtic tiger years and afterwards, when people dropped out. Other European countries do apprenticeships much better than we do. The Germans, for example, strongly value it. There are very strong, robust connections between industry and the apprenticeship schemes, and not just in manufacturing but also in food production, dairy, ICT and a range of sectors where we do not look at apprenticeships. We have internships, but we need apprenticeships that offer young people jobs and a training element. We need to go back and examine the apprenticeship model in this country and value them more because there is a lot more we can do to encourage business to ensure there is ongoing training and innovation in companies, which supports employees and young people.

Youth entrepreneurship is very valuable. I am one who places great faith in creativity, innovation, thinking outside the box and encouraging young people to be part of that. That could be done in secondary schools. There is much more we can do to foster innovation in secondary schools and enable young people who show innovation, who are creative and want to set up their own businesses, to do so. We could also encourage people who have made it, successful businesses, to get the message across to them that it is in their interests-----