Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is a work in progress and something we are constructing, and that is the reason I am open to suggestions, proposals and ideas people may have. Basically, it has a number of strands. The first one is to develop traineeships and we would start to move to the German-Austrian-Finnish model of a dual system where we would not be simply directing almost all of our young people in terms of opportunity into third level. We would be offering people traineeships - some traditional apprenticeships that would combine learning and work experience. That seems to be what makes the difference for the countries which have significantly lower levels of youth employment. We are engaged in extensive discussions with a range of different organisations, as is the Department of Education and Skills because through the new Solas structure it delivers a good deal on the training and education side. I spoke about traineeships where people would become associate professionals and go into IT at the entry or mid-level, having been trained for, say, four to six months by a local IT or other educational institution. They would then work for six to eight months, then have more education and then more work, and then the person is qualified to a mid-level for either an entry level job or a mid-level job. Under the German, Finnish and Austrian system if such an individual showed a particular talent - such people do in significant numbers - and this could be in mechanics, in a technical area, or in electrics, they could then go on at that point to university. We might find that the head of Porsche perhaps started off as an apprentice trainee, gained mechanical education and then moved on up the academic ladder. Up to 20 years ago we had a strong mixed system in Ireland but as the economy developed we moved away from that in 1980s. The last area of significant apprenticeships left in Ireland were apprenticeships in the construction sector. In the other countries I mentioned such apprenticeships apply to the retail, banking, IT and technical sectors ranging from people who want to train to be opticians to those who want to train to be accountants and who become accountants and train at the technician level and then advance later. I am talking about a vocational technical stream as opposed to a more university academic stream.

Another strand is promoting entrepreneurship among young people. I have met many young people as I travelled around the country who want this skill covered at secondary level and even at primary level. Pupils in the primary classes in my old school in Stanhope Street in the centre of Dublin are undertaking small-scale entrepreneurship projects around small companies, coming up with an idea of producing a book or producing items they can sell to their older brothers and sisters for their debs night such as key rings and so on. That is an important stream also. Many jobs in the future will be self-created, perhaps leading to the person becoming an employer of other people. We are having a very interesting experience as a country as we open ourselves up to new ideas and I am listening very carefully to the ideas.

The number of people who will be affected next year by the measure will be approximately 13,500 to 14,000; those are not my figures, they are the official figures. We can turn around what we are spending exclusively on people's social welfare payments, as it were for them to do nothing, and perhaps feel neglected and tempted to emigrate because they do not see a future here and change that investment into training, education and work experience. With the number of JobBridge internships having passed 22,000, the most striking feature is the calibre of the young people, which, as I said yesterday, is very good. Many of their educational qualifications are very impressive but they have never held a job. They came of age and were in secondary school and in third level when the Celtic tiger was doing very well. They did not have an opportunity to do low level entry jobs that would have given them the experience of working. People emerged then with estimable qualifications but because they have never worked employers will not take a bet on them.

They will prefer the person who has a mix of work experience and technical education. If those people were undertaking a graduate course in a German university, one could be jolly sure that they would be employed at the local Siemens facility, or in some other company, during term time or on an occasional basis so they would have some serious work experience by the time they graduate. I think that has been the missing element here.

As I said yesterday, I am happy to undertake to come back to the Seanad for a detailed debate on this matter. By the end of the year, the Heads of State have to sign off on this and we have to put forward the Irish proposals in this regard. I am interested to hear about people's different experiences and ideas. We will actually start next year. We are already doing some of these things through our education system and various social protection schemes. We need to make some leaps of imagination.

On 1 January next, we will open the JobsPlus scheme to young people who have been out of work for more than six months. We will give the employer a wage subsidy of €300 for every month of employment given to the young person, up to a maximum of two years, which is what happens in Germany and Austria. We will give the employer a subsidy of €400 a month if the person who is taken on has been unemployed for more than two years. I think that is a good incentive. It means that employers who are trying to decide whether they can afford to take on more people - whether they have the cash flow and the profitability to support this - will have a wage subsidy, part of which will be targeted at young people. In turn, the employer will receive the freshness, energy, initiative and enthusiasm that all young people bring to the workplace. The young person will have an enormous sense of pleasure and achievement at having been selected for work. That is such a formative experience for young adults. Anyone who misses out on it has to take a long step back to start to get it again.

As I have said, I will be happy to come back to the House to go through this approach in detail. Between 13,000 and 14,000 people will be affected by this measure. A cache of 20,000 places will be available. I am very confident that we will be able to provide very interesting, rewarding, fulfilling and progressive avenues and pathways to our young people.