Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 188: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills whether the portion of the interventions funded by the European Globalisation Fund programme for 9,000 workers made redundant in the NACE 41 Construction of Buildings, NACE 43 Specialised Construction Activities and NACE 71 Architectural Services construction sub-sectors between 1 July 2009 and 31 March 2010 will be complementary to existing interventions provided by the State; the portion of the funds secured under this application that will be used to defray costs of existing State interventions accessed by any of the individual construction workers named in the original application since the application was submitted; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36218/11]

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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1A number of measures, for which EGF co-financing assistance is being sought for almost 9,000 workers made redundant in the NACE 41 Construction of Buildings, NACE 43 Specialised Construction Activities and NACE 71 Architectural Services construction sub-sectors between 1 July 2009 and 31 March 2010, have been, and continue to be, provided by relevant service providers.

Interventions being funded under existing budgetary provision 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, enterprise start-up advisory and financial supports and related training and education allowances where appropriate. In the absence of EGF funding to date, although in anticipation of such funding, all relevant measures must in the interim be provided through national funding.

That a suite of measures, or the types of measures, as outlined above, may be provided to redundant workers in the normal course of events, or to other redundant persons, does not make those measures any less valuable in terms of upskilling, providing education opportunities and keeping the particular redundant persons in question in closer contact with the labour market. The provision of EGF funding will permit these measures to have been provided as a complement to normal provision, the measures having been directed specifically at the eligible cohort of redundant workers. Moreover, the reimbursement of up to 65% of validated expenditure on these measures in due course allows for greater national funding to be targeted at the generality of activation measures at a time of significant constraints on the public finances.

My Department in conjunction with other Government Departments and Agencies is currently seeking to put in place certain new measures to assist these particular redundant workers in the period to the end of the EGF programmes, when approved by the EU, next June. The precise breakdown of expenditure as between different EGF related measures throughout the full period of these EGF programmes is not yet known and is unlikely to be known with finality until the programmes are duly completed.