Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would say the problem is at their end because this was well publicised. If those in the industry and the sector are on top of their jobs, they should know about it. It would certainly not be the fault of SOLAS.

The motion is about trying to expand Springboard to cater for other areas. Senator Jim D'Arcy mentioned the issue of low-paid workers and this is a perfect opportunity to look at that through the new skills strategy and the reform. The motive of the Government parties for the past four or five years was to tackle unemployment. We came in with unemployment at 15% and heading for 20% - that is what everyone said and no one disputed those figures. Our aim had to be to get unemployment back down and give long and short-term unemployed people an opportunity to get back into a job. A big part of that was upskilling and re-skilling people and that is what Springboard was there for. It was targeted generally at those who were unemployed. One does not have to be unemployed to do an ICT conversion course.

There is still a long way to go, as 10% unemployment is still far too high and there are loads of people out there who want a job. Now, however, we need to focus on upskilling people who are in employment, such as low-paid workers and others who need to keep their job in a company, for whom upskilling or retraining by getting involved in FET is the only way to have a safe career. Everyone has to be constantly upskilling now and moving with the times, no matter who or what they are. That is the agenda.

I would agree with the motive of the motion. The idea is right and if we have Springboard or some other initiative, that is where we are going. I will come back to the success of Springboard. As regards the jobs end of it, we have had the Action Plan for Jobs process. Although people laughed and saw red and so on, most people now accept that it worked. It focused the minds of every Government Department, every Government agency and many beyond that. It is up to all of us to try and turn around the jobs crisis.

The target set out in the Action Plan for Jobs was to create 100,000 jobs by 2016. I was concerned the target was high - it had to be ambitious but I was worried the Government would be accused of not achieving it. Although most people did not think it was possible, the figure of 100,000 was reached a couple of weeks ago in the private sector. All of us have helped through our strategies, documents and reports. The Government's job was to create the environment, not to create the jobs. The private sector has created over 100,000 net new jobs on top of job losses. We have had over 30,000 people leaving the public sector and many job losses in that period. We are now back at a little over 1.9 million people at work and our target is 2.1 million people. We will only achieve that if we are able to upskill workers and get those who are unemployed back into a job.

We also need to bring people home, an issue close to Senator Mooney's heart. We will not achieve our target if we do not attract at least 100,000 people back home to take up jobs. While those targets are for 2018, we want to go further by 2020. To get to full employment - where everyone who wants a job has one - by 2018, we will need lots of new skills developed as many new jobs will come on stream. There are not enough people in the domestic market to fill all those jobs.

There are options here and the achievement of the 100,000 target proves that full employment by 2018 is possible. I am working with all the companies, organisations and Departments in the sector and have no doubt it will be achieved. We aim to fill as many as possible of those jobs from the domestic market. That brings us back to the success of Springboard and other initiatives. When I got this job from the Taoiseach, the message was very clear that we cannot have a situation in which there are thousands of jobs created that cannot be filled by people from the domestic market. That means people who are living here and coming through our education system; it does not matter what nationality they are. There is a major skills gap which we are trying to fill through ICT courses, Springboard, Momentum, Pathways to Work and all the other initiatives, by bringing people close to a job, into a job or into work placements with companies.

There has been a lot of reform in all our agencies. The ETBs, which were previously the VECs, have gone from 33 to 16 in number. It was a difficult time for everybody with all the change over the past two or three years - SOLAS is only here since 2013. The ETBs have only just finished going through their change and there are still staffing issues to be sorted out. I thank everyone involved in that reform, which has put us in the position to be able to take on the skills gap and close it.

All our educational partners - the ETBs, ITs, PLC providers and higher education institutions - have become more industry focused and outward focused. We need to engage with industry to know what its needs are and provide the necessary skills. While education is not just about taking up a job, that is a major part of it. We must talk to employers regularly and link with them. Many of Senators have mentioned that the Springboard courses are designed in conjunction with employers, as are many of our other programmes. That is where we have to be and we now have the reforms to do it and to drive on. We should let SOLAS do its work as the authority behind this. We should listen to and engage with employers at every point along the way. There is no point in turning out graduates in the wrong area as they are just going to go abroad. That is not going to serve us. While we are making progress, there is work to do.

A couple of other comments were made and I will go through them as best I can if I have time. Senator Quinn referred to the issue of qualifying criteria for the ICT conversion courses. People do not have to be on social welfare to qualify. To be able to retain social welfare in the form of a back to education allowance, a person has to be able to show they have been on the live register for nine of the previous 12 months. I am assuming that is the criteria to which the Senator is referring and it is something we should look at. I do not like these cut-offs where someone does not qualify because they are a week or a month short. To be clear, it is possible to qualify for one of those courses without being on social welfare.

One of the good aspects of Springboard is that it is open to self-employed people whose company went wrong for whatever reason.They can now participate on a Springboard course, be retrained, acquire a new skill and start a new career. People have had great success from participating in that initiative. The self-employed often feel left out and that the country has neglected them. In some cases they may be right and in other cases they might not, but the Springboard initiative is open to everybody. One need not be in receipt of a social welfare payment to participate in it, but one has to sign on for credits. In the past one had to be in receipt of a social welfare payment before one could qualify for it, but now it is sufficient for people to be signing on for credits. Therefore, some progress has been made.

Senator Quinn, Senator Craughwell and others mentioned the shortage of foreign language skills. That issue has been brought to my attention by quite a number of companies. We all know about that and have plenty of evidence on it because we are constantly checking the data and analysing what is needed. A new modern language strategy is being designed and worked on by the Department of Education and Skills to cater for all levels of education right throughout the system to examine how we can tackle this issue. We will not be able to fill all the jobs that have a language demand because in some cases the companies require native-level proficiency in speaking a language, and people who are not from the country whose language is required might never be able to achieve that standard. Learning foreign languages does not sit easy with Irish people, but we have to change that mindset. I remember discussing this with the Higher Education Authority a number of years ago at a committee and asking why we were not providing options for students to study foreign languages, but it turned out that the options are provided and students are not selecting them. The universities and institutes of technology have courses with a foreign language component but students are not selecting those courses because they are avoiding the requirement to study a foreign language. We have to get the message into the heads of students and their parents that if a student takes up a foreign language he or she is likely to have a better, stronger or more secure career because there is a demand for people with language skills. However, students are not doing that and we have to work on it. I understand this issue must be tackled at primary level into secondary and on to third level.

Similarly, in the area of information technology, an IT deficiency cannot be solved at third level; IT must be a feature of primary and secondary level. Hopefully, we can reflect the change that is needed in the business strategy that will be coming out. There is no doubt that we must tackle that issue.

Hundreds of thousands of new Irish or non-Irish people are living and working in this country. Some of them are in low-paid jobs and some are in well-paid jobs, but they have language skills that we need at the higher end. We must be prepared to work with those people and try to reskill or convert them over and let them fill the jobs for which there is a language skill demand. Their jobs would then be freed up for others to take up and start off in. There is that category. We will not solve the language problem with our new strategy in the next two or three years - it will take a long-term solution - but we need short-term solutions to fill those jobs. People living in this country are well fit to take them up. There is an onus on all of us to get our heads around that and put an effort into joining the dots. Hopefully, we can do that.

Deputy Maurice Cummins spoke about the massaging of figures and asked if the figures were real in terms of the jobs. I dealt with that point. Springboard is a great initiative. I want to be clear on this. People often question whether the 100,000-plus net new jobs that have been created are real jobs and well-paid jobs. They are real, well-paid jobs and the majority of them are full-time. More than half of them have been created through the IDA and Enterprise Ireland - these jobs are generally regarded as well-paid jobs, and they are full-time. It is often said that we are taking people off the live register with activation schemes, but we are not. To give members a rough idea of the figures, during the so-called boom years, approximately 75,000 people were on labour activation schemes, and the figure now is approximately 80,000. It is not that 100,000 people have been put on activation schemes - that is not the case. There was always a need for activation schemes and there always will be a need for them. There is always an onus on us to constantly tweak them and make them better and bring people closer to a job, and that is what we must work on.

That brings me on to the JobBridge scheme, of which some contributors were critical, and the scheme that was mentioned by Senators Ó Domhnaill and Kathryn Reilly, who quoted the Nevin Institute's report. I have read that report and I spoke to those who were involving in writing it. They admit that the scheme was brought in in a hurry. It was not ever going to be perfect, but it served quite well at the time. They say it needs to be reformed and changed. Nobody is against that. The Department of Social Protection has agreed to examine it to see if it can be tweaked or improved. It can be open to abuse in some cases. An impression has been given that everyone is abusing it, but that is not the case. JobBridge is an amazing initiative. The idea for developing it came through our committee, and Members may recall that we recommended an examination of the internships used abroad. We developed JobBridge to give people a chance to get close to working and to get into a job. Most employers will say it is not sufficient for a person to have completed college and have a slip of paper certifying that; they also need to have job experience. People are getting that now through JobBridge. It is wrong to say it has been abused right, left and centre. It has been abused by some, who are being dealt with when caught - and rightly so - but the majority do not abuse it and they do quite well out of it. More than 60% of people get a job from it eventually or end up in employment. That is extremely high compared to labour activation measures internationally. I would defend it while acknowledging that we can always improve it by tweaking it, which we will do. It should not be claimed that everybody is abusing it, because that would be wrong and would be unfair to all those who have done quite well out of what is quite a good scheme.

I want to make sure I cover all the issues that have been raised. I dealt with the skills gap. The issue of apprenticeships was raised. To update members, we are moving to a new type of apprenticeship. The apprenticeship councils were set up. Members might pass on this information to Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill, who has left the Chamber. Eighty-six submissions have been received, and these are being analysed and worked on by the apprenticeship council with the assistance of SOLAS and the Department of Education and Skills. They will bring forward their recommendations to myself and Minister, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, in mid- to late June, and we will then make a decision on which of them can be rolled out quickly. I would hope that we will have some new apprenticeships on offer this autumn and winter, and certainly in 2016 there will be a roll-out. With some luck, most of the 86 submissions may be taken into account, although probably not all of them because quite a number of them are in certain areas, but we will work on that and add to that. The rolling out of apprenticeships is taking place. We should discuss apprenticeships further, because it is a very good way to go. I note that Senator Leyden is nodding at me. The ESB is leading the way in this regard, having announced another 300 new apprenticeships. I was at the launch of that announcement a few months ago. Eircom and other companies are doing the same. I will call on more State bodies to take on apprenticeships. This is the way we will proceed. The blend of vocational training and higher education is the perfect way for individuals to develop a skill and a career, and it is important to work with industry to create jobs by closing the gap they have in filling jobs.

There was talk of job losses in Monaghan and so on. I believe we can certainly find a solution to those job losses, because people are highly skilled and trained. We will work with industry to try to get the qualifications of those in employment accredited and upgraded. Many people with great qualifications have been working in companies for 20 or 30 years, but those qualifications are not written down as such. We have to work with them to get that done as well.

The national talent drive is part of the Action Plan for Jobs. It involves filling gaps locally. In the short term we will work with companies where they have to bring in skills from abroad. We will change the permit system to allow for that in the short term, on condition that those people who come in are part of the retraining and upskilling initiative, and we will work to make sure the skills are provided in the domestic market as well.

There is a good deal of public consultation taking place though all the elements of our strategy. The issue of post leaving certificate courses, PLCs, was raised. I do not believe we cut the number of the PLC places last year, but I may stand corrected on the figures; I think the figures were the same. It is wrong to say they were cut, and they certainly should not be.