John Cregan (Limerick West, Fianna Fail)
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Question 154: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the situation in relation to the number of experienced tradesmen currently or recently made redundant as a result of more competitive foreign labour; if the particular trades can be itemised and the number of each category shown; if strategy or plans to use the experience of these people can be outlined; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18354/07]

Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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The number of redundancies in the building and civil engineering sector in 2006 was 2,126. It is not possible to break this figure down further into particular trades. However, these redundancies were outweighed by the number of new jobs created in the construction sector so that the net number of additional jobs created in the construction sector in the year to the first quarter of 2007 was 28,300.

I would point out that the full range of services provided by FÁS is available to all unemployed people and, in particular, FÁS provides an integrated support service for people being made redundant. This involves information sessions, skills analysis, training/retraining courses and job placement. In the delivery of these services, FÁS liaises with other relevant agencies such as Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, the City/County Enterprise Boards and the Department of Social and Family Affairs.

I would also point out that the problem concerning the alleged exceptional collective redundancy situations was addressed in Section 18.1 of the Social Partnership Agreement "Towards 2016" which states that "the opening of the Irish labour market arising from the decision to permit direct access by citizens of the new EU Member States has given rise to concerns about the possibility of the collective compulsory replacement of workers by lower paid workers from these States or elsewhere, either directly or through the use of other replacement workers within the jurisdiction".

To address this problem, Section 18.3 provides a mechanism for the setting up of a Redundancy Panel whereby employee representatives can request the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to ask the Labour Court for an Opinion as to whether or not the proposed collective redundancy dismissals are in fact genuine.

This provision was given legislative effect on 8th May, 2007 when the Protection of Employment (Exceptional Collective Redundancies and Related Matters) Act 2007 was passed. In addition to providing for the setting up of the Panel, this Act also provides for situations where dismissals take place contrary to an Opinion of the Labour Court, with particular reference to redundancy rebate entitlements, tax treatment of redundancy payments as well as consideration of Unfair Dismissal entitlements in such situations, and for penalties and appeals.