Michael Mullins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join in the welcome for the Minister of State, Deputy English, for this very important debate. I compliment my colleagues, Senators Jim D'Arcy and Terry Brennan, on proposing and seconding the motion before the House. This is a very good news story. It is delivering in a big way and making a huge contribution to reducing unemployment levels, which have come down from 15.1% to 9.9%. As we saw in the figures published by the CSO in the last 24 hours, the number of unemployed people fell by 45,000 in the 12 months to the end of quarter 1, bringing the annual net increase in employment to over 40,000 and indicating that we have 1.93 million people at work.

Back in 2011, when the country was on its knees, the Government rightly acknowledged that our talented workforce was not going to find work in construction, manufacturing and retail, which were experiencing real difficulty. It provided 6,000 places, which were announced by the then Minister, to upskill and reskill people in order to address the skills shortages in certain areas. We must all acknowledge the fine job that was done by the Higher Education Authority in managing the scheme and, indeed, the 42 educational institutions that have offered a wide range of courses. We judge these things by results. The fact that more than 21,000 people participated in 812 courses in those 42 institutions I mentioned is certainly an indication that there was an appetite for this course. It was easy to access, and the fact that it was provided without any fees was certainly a major plus.

A very interesting statistic is that more than 54% of people who graduated from the courses are earning over €25,000 per annum today, and 11% are earning over €43,000. Around 40% of those who participated in courses were in employment within six weeks and there was a significant level of self-employment, as has already been noted. I find that element particularly pleasing. We want to encourage entrepreneurship and to encourage people to consider providing employment for themselves and, hopefully, creating an additional job or two. The Action Plan for Jobs, which is an all-of-government response to the crisis, is placing an emphasis on all aspects of our economy. Hopefully we will continue to see progress being made and we will hit the target of full employment by 2018.

The feedback from people who have participated in the Springboard programme is excellent. Some 98% of the 2014 graduates were willing to recommend Springboard to others who wished to reskill for employment, and 73% of graduates felt their career prospects were much better six weeks after the course's completion.

My colleagues referred to a number of issues. I particularly want to refer to the points made by Senator Quinn on the need for us, as a country, to invest more in and place much more emphasis on foreign languages. We all know many of the job opportunities in the future will be in China, other parts of Asia and parts of the developing world. We need to spend much more of our resources on equipping our young people to seek those opportunities in other countries but also, as jobs are located here from some of those foreign countries, we need to have the skills to fill the opportunities that arise.

I agree very much with Senator Mooney in regard to the many young people in this country who are non-academic and have lower skills levels and lower educational attainment. I believe we need to focus on those people. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and up to 2000, in my own town there were three major manufacturing companies that provided a lot of, if one likes, low-level manufacturing jobs for young people who had left school, some with disabilities, who could be trained on the job. They made a real and meaningful contribution to the workforce and, indeed, played a major role in society. Today, unfortunately, those opportunities are not there. Many young people are falling through the cracks and are not getting an opportunity to participate fully in the workforce. We need to invest more heavily in further education for these people and also to devise an opportunity to give them a chance to gain the work experience that will enable them to obtain employment in an appropriate setting.

I wish the Minister of State well in everything he is doing. I hope the recently announced Springboard Plus programme will achieve its goals and that we will be back here in the near future hoping to build on its successes as we go forward.