Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Chair has said, we had a detailed discussion on many of these points earlier. I do not want to repeat what was put on the record of the House at that time. To be helpful to Senator Healy Eames, in particular, I told Senators earlier that I travelled to Germany with the Taoiseach at the beginning of the summer to go through the details of what a youth guarantee would entail at a Europe-wide level. I brought this through the EU Council of employment and social protection ministers. It is being done on an EU-wide basis. Many Senators have wide experience of EU structures. They will appreciate that all of this needs to be worked out in great detail. I cannot give the Senator a final answer at this time. I am going to Paris with the Taoiseach next week for a follow-up meeting on the details of the plan. The plan will be agreed by the heads of state at their meeting in December. I am sorry that I cannot give an absolute answer. I can set out what was agreed in Berlin.

The development of the vocational side of the dual-training model, which is used in many European countries, means that in addition to the familiar graduate third-level pathway there will also be a significant vocational, employment and training experience pathway. As a result of the collapse of the apprenticeship system in Ireland, which largely followed the collapse of the building industry, we have relatively few apprentices in many areas. In any event, our apprenticeship structures were largely for young men. The only apprenticeships of interest to young women, by and large, related to hairdressing. The first element of this plan will involve the development by Ireland of a dual model that will give equal respect to the third-level academic route and to the vocational-based apprenticeship and traineeship route. The second element of it will involve the promotion of internships. The third element of it will involve the promotion of intra-EU labour mobility.

The approach that is being taken will engage the European employment service, EURES, and will involve the targeted use of employment subsidies - the JobsPlus scheme is an example of such a subsidy - and the development of youth entrepreneurship supports. As I said earlier, approximately €2.5 million will be made available through the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in that respect. Business processes in public employment services throughout Europe will be reviewed and redesigned. Closer links between the training agencies of public employment services and employers will be developed across the EU.

The Senator asked how we will know what young people of different classes, categories and ages need, given that many of them are at different levels. There is a big difference between an 18 year old and a 25 year old in terms of experience and maturity, etc.

We have been rolling out the Intreo system since I became Minister. Members may have seen the conversion of some of the offices and may have seen the office in Loughrea. When somebody of any age comes to the new offices, we profile them not just in the traditional way of name, address and PPS number but, more importantly, in terms of education, different education and experience attainments, what they previously worked at, what they previously earned, where they worked and what kind of jobs did they hold and for how long. We worked on this with the ESRI and can, therefore, make a prediction of exit from the live register.

I spoke with the Senator's colleagues earlier about what we have started to do so far. Ireland won one of the first model schemes in respect of young people in Ballymun entitled youngballymun. People from that project were in the Dáil today briefing other colleagues in the Oireachtas as well as the head of activation in the Department of Social Protection, assistant secretary, Mr. John McKeown. He appeared before the Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection today and gave a very detailed handout setting out the composition. I will endeavour to get a copy of his handout and PowerPoint presentation tomorrow. We anticipate that about 14,000 young people will be affected by the changes we are discussing and that a cache of 20,000 places will be available next year. Do we have all the details finalised at this stage? Not absolutely. We know exactly where we want to go and the resources that are commanded. I assure Senators that the €32 million in savings will be spent many times over on activation, employment, work experience and so on.

We have been trying to learn from countries that have been successful in tackling youth unemployment. Two things are critical. Not everybody wants to go to college. Lots of people want to do practically oriented courses that are heavily linked from day 1 to employment. We have been talking to people like Fast Into Technology, FIT, to develop appropriate courses with our institutes of technology which would give associate professional status in different fields to young people. That will be a new development in Ireland and I am hopeful we will move to progress that. We have already started the Momentum courses this year and will have more of them.

We have a very exciting and demanding programme for everybody involved - civil servants and educators and trainers. We have already done a remarkable conversion of the Department of Social Protection from being a passive payer of benefits to a more active public employment service. That is the road we intend to go down and I would be more than happy to take up the invitation proffered by Senators Moloney, van Turnhout and Bacik and others to come back to the Seanad at an appropriate stage and debate it in detail.