Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 107: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason all the staff of a company (details supplied) were not included in the European Globalisation Fund application. [14904/12]

Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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Question 124: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if his attention has been drawn to the difficulty of staff previously employed by a company (details supplied) in County Limerick who have been informed that they do not qualify for funding through European Globalisation Fund and therefore cannot access third level education as a result; and if he has put any alternatives in place to permit those individuals to access further training and education. [15082/12]

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 107 and 124 together.

In accordance with Article 5(1) of EGF Regulation (EC) No 1927/2006, a maximum period of 10 weeks applies from the end of the relevant EGF reference period within which an EGF application must be submitted. On 9 June 2010, the Department submitted an application for co-funded assistance from the EGF in respect of 9,089 former workers made redundant in the construction industry during the nine months EGF reference period between 1 July 2009 and 31 March 2010. For this EGF application the subsequent 10 weeks application submission period ended on 9 June 2010.

All EGF programmes are subject to audit by both national and EU authorities. Of the utmost importance is the requirement for the Irish authorities to be able to verify the cohort who are deemed eligible for EGF supports and to ensure that all relevant criteria of the Fund are met in respect of that cohort. In order to meet the EGF requirements of verifiably meeting the initial 500 redundancy threshold within the reference period and to identify the entire relevant cohort over the implementation period of an approved EGF programme, the Department used data from the statutory redundancy payments system. This is a demonstrably verifiable source of data such as is deemed sufficient to satisfy both national and EU audits and national management control checks. With the very large numbers of redundant workers included in the Irish EGF construction sector application and the number of employers involved ,which data is also required by the European Commission, the Department's reliance on this system was reinforced.

Those redundant workers who were ultimately included in the EGF application were identified on the basis of the most recent recorded date of registration for a statutory redundancy payment as at 28 April 2010. As appropriate for those redundant apprentices included in the NACE 41 and 43 sub-sectors, their identification was based, in addition, on data from the apprenticeship database held by FÁS.

Statutory redundancy payment data on which the cohort of eligible redundant workers was based, was received from the Redundancy Payments Division of the then Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment on 28 April 2010, some four weeks into the 10 week period allowed after the reference period for submission of the application to the European Commission.

There are limited staffing and infrastructural resources available both in the statutory redundancy payment and EGF Managing Authority areas with which to process, collate, disaggregate and verify very significant amounts of data across some 9,000 individuals and some 3,349 employers. This exercise was also conducted at a time of considerable pressure on the activation agenda at national level with very challenging levels of unemployment both in the construction industry and in many other areas and sectors. In this context, the Irish EGF application sought to maximise the numbers of eligible redundant workers for co-financed assistance as far as practically possible. I understand that the aggregated application submitted contains collectively the largest number of redundant workers to be encompassed in an EGF application to date. When disaggregated, the NACE 41 sub-sector element, of the application alone, encompasses over 3,200 individuals, the third largest number of redundant workers for whom co-financing assistance has been sought across the EU to date.

The EGF application was duly submitted on 9 June 2010 and was made on the basis of particular information available to the Department at a given point in time. As such, some 37 former employees of the company in question were identified as having been made redundant during the relevant reference period based on the available data.

It should be noted that it is not the enterprise making the workers redundant but the individual workers who have been identified as having been made redundant, which is the key element in terms of EGF eligibility.

Moreover, the redundant payments system, on which the data in the EGF application was significantly based, does not automatically follow up each of the 3,349 employers encompassed by the application on a rolling basis and seek updated details of all workers who may have been let go at different times. Thus, the relevant information from this source was the best available to my Department when compiling the EGF application and at the time of the making of the application.

There is a wide range of non-EGF co-financed active labour market interventions which are available to all qualifying redundant workers, including in the architectural profession, provided by FÁS, the VECs, the CEBs and the higher education system subject to the meeting of the relevant criteria of existing schemes in individual cases. For example, FÁS runs the Professional Networking and Support Programme and it is open to all professionals, including those encompassed in the NACE 71 sector, to apply for access to the programme through their local Employment Services Office.

In relation to access to third level education for persons not eligible for the particular supports co-financed through an EGF programme, it is open to any individual to apply for a place on an undergraduate or post graduate higher education programme in the publicly funded higher education sector and, depending on their previous level of educational attainment and personal circumstances, they may be eligible for support under the Free Fees Scheme or the Student Grant Scheme. Further information is available on the website www.studentfinance.ie.

Under the Springboard initiative, launched in May 2011, free part time higher education places are available to unemployed persons to reskill in areas of identified skills needs. Last month more than 500 additional places were made available on courses that had exceptionally high demand when first run in 2011. 10m Euros has also been made available for the roll-out of Springboard 2012 and details of the courses being funded and the number of places being supported, will be available in May 2012, following a competitive tendering process.

In addition, more than 750 free places have been provided on 17 new graduate skills conversion programmes nationally. The programmes allow those with the appropriate qualifications to convert their skills during an intensive course of study in a higher education institute and a corresponding work placement in a collaborative company.

The details of Springboard and ICT Skills Conversion programmes are available on www.bluebrick.ie and participants can apply online at this website.