Mary Moran (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy English, to the House and I commend my Fine Gael colleagues on their introduction of this Private Members' motion. As has been said, it is an excellent motion. It shows that Springboard is working. It is one of the big successes of this Government. Since it was launched in 2011, as has been said, more than 21,000 people have participated in Springboard courses, with an allocation of €85 million. Others have referred to the eligibility requirements for the programme, including that candidates must be unemployed, actively seeking employment, in receipt of one of the qualifying social protection payments, previously employed or signing on for credits. A total of 812 courses have been offered by 42 institutions, and there is no doubt as to the benefit this has had for so many students on these courses, who have been provided with the opportunity to upskill and retrain in areas of identified skills need. Springboard Plus is now going even further. All courses approved for funding under this programme are selected by an independent panel with industry and educational expertise following a competitive tendering process. In particular, courses with a proven track record in getting people back into employment are recommended for funding. I welcome the recent announcement that almost a further €27.5 million will be allocated to Springboard Plus in 2015, and this will provide for 9,000 places on 285 courses in 42 colleges throughout the country. To date, two trend analysis evaluations on Springboard have been completed, with the third due next month. Trends emerging show that 98% of people would recommend Springboard courses to a family member or friend. One knows something is working when people recommend it to those closest to them.

The programme has also been very successful in reaching its target cohorts. Some 63% of participants are between the ages of 25 and 39, which is a critical stage in the world of work, and in 2014, 61% had been out of work for more than a year. I am delighted to see that, year-on-year, there is also an upward trend in female participants, from 26% in 2011 to 36% in 2014. I was recently speaking to a lady who qualified as a teacher many years ago, got married and gave up teaching to rear her children. She devoted the last 20 years to raising her children, and when she went back to look for a job teaching, she found her qualifications were not up to date. She was finding it very difficult to get something, so she availed of the Springboard course, went off in a completely different direction, and is now hoping to specialise in an area of ICT, which she had never imagined before. As she said, it had a positive effect not only on her life but also on her children, because for the first time she was going back out into the world of work, and her children also had to gain independence.

I am sure reference has been made to our local college in Dundalk, Dundalk Institute of Technology, which has been awarded 11 Springboard courses this year. There are 550 places on courses ranging from level 6 through to level 9. We are all in agreement - those of us from County Louth, anyway - on how excellent DkIT has proven itself to be. It offers a range of courses, from a level 6 certificate in building information modelling up to a level 9 MSc in computing and medical device software. There is a diploma in composing for games and a certificate in 3D for games. DKIT is going exactly where we need to be going in areas that need to be targeted. Senator Ó Domhnaill referred earlier to colleges offering courses in plastering during the downturn in the economy, which is self-evidently ridiculous.

This is brilliant for people who have a level of education and who are going in a different direction, but I totally agree with Senator Ó Domhnaill that much more needs to be done for people who have left school early, at 16, and who may not be able to access courses. I am talking even more specifically about people with an intellectual disability. I spoke to someone today who said that some people who want to leave school early are coming from special schools at the age of 16 or 17 and they cannot access the HSE-funded programmes in the National Learning Network until they are 18. They are caught in that dilemma, and we all know that if a person gets into the habit of being unemployed or not pursuing something, it is much harder to get back into the swing of it. I agree that is something we need to look at, and maybe we should not only have such high levels, but also level 4 or 5.

I commend the Fine Gael Senators on their introduction of this motion and I thank the Minister of State for attending.