Tom Fleming (Kerry South, Independent)
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Question 73: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the position regarding an application for co-financing support from the European Globalisation Fund for retraining and upskilling tradespeople and building workers; the amount of funding to be made available; the number of workers who will be catered for; the number of places that will be available in County Kerry; and the envisaged commencement date. [29078/11]

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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On 7 October 201 the European Commission approved co-financing of €35.7m under the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) in respect of three applications for assistance submitted in June 2010 for almost 9,000 former workers made redundant in the construction NACE 41, 43 and 71 subsectors between 1 July 2009 and 31 March 2010. These applications still require to be approved by the other EU budgetary authorities of the European Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. In total, including national co-financing, the three applications will total €55m to provide guidance, training, education and enterprise supports to eligible beneficiaries.

A number of national measures, for which EGF co-financing has been sought, are already being provided by the relevant service providers and funded from national sources. These measures include career guidance, full, part-time and evening further education and training courses, apprenticeship on- and off-the-job training, full and part-time third level education programmes and related training and education allowances where appropriate. The main service providers delivering these supports are FÁS, Vocational Education Committees and publicly funded higher education institutes. Training is also being provided through contracted private providers and the technical employment support grant mechanism administered by FÁS.

As data is being collated from a number of service providers at present, it is not possible to provide a breakdown by county of expenditure and participation rates to date. It is estimated nationally that at least 4,500 interventions for this cohort have been commenced in the areas of guidance, training and third level education. All eligible individual beneficiaries will be contacted in due course and be made aware of the specific interventions available to them under the relevant EGF programmes. I will make a further announcement on how those interventions will be made available and on how eligible persons will be informed in the next couple of weeks.