Replacing Fás with a national employment service is among the proposals in a Labour policy document unveiled at the party’s election headquarters in Dublin this morning.
“Labour’s Plan for Jobseekers” was announced by the party’s education spokesman and director of elections Ruairí Quinn and Social Protection spokeswoman Roisin Shortall.
The main element in the plan is the establishment of a national service to replace Fás.The new agency would integrate employment services to jobseekers, previously carried out by Fás, with the delivery of social protection benefits.
An integrated National Employment Service would also provide a "one stop shop" for people seeking to establish their benefit entitlements; looking for a job; and seeking advice about training options.
Among the other proposals in the document are: “Bridge the Gap” - A graduate and apprentice work placement scheme; an “Earn and Learn” scheme; a reduced qualifying period for the Back to Education and Back to Work Enterprise Allowance Schemes; and 30,000 additional training places across the education and training system.
In a statement, Mr Quinn said: “If there is one area of public policy that absolutely sums up the failure of the outgoing Fianna Fáil government it is unemployment.
“The legacy of Fianna Fáil in this area is more than 440,000 on the Live Register and 20 months in succession where the figure has been over 400,000, and everyone knows that the Live Register would be even higher were it not for renewed emigration.”
Mr Quinn said this trend would not be countered simply by expanding the existing supply of continuous education and training.
“We need a strategy that is more creative and more committed about helping people off the Live Register and into training, education or employment that will permanently reduced their risk of long-term unemployment.
“We need to match education and training to the future needs of the economy. It means we have to look at how and where training is delivered; new ways of combining work and training or education and innovative ways of using the considerable wealth of skills that our people possess.”
He added: “What is very clear is that we cannot continue with the policy of Fianna Fáil - which was essentially to ignore the unemployment problem and hope that something would turn up. Ireland cannot afford a return to the levels of long-term unemployment that blighted so many communities during the 1980s. We cannot afford to lose another generation of educated and talented young people.
“We have to give our people the education and training options they need,” Mr Quinn said.
Asked about the indications in national opinion polls that Fine Gael could have enough Dáil seats to form a government on its own, or with the support of a number of Independents, Mr Quinn said this morning’s Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI constituency poll told a different story, with Fine Gael on only 20 per cent in Cork North-Central.
He added that an analysis by the European Commission (European Economy, Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, February 2011) showed that reaching Fine Gael's 3 per cent of GDP deficit target by 2014 would require €5 billion more in taxes and cuts than the main Opposition party was prepared to admit.
He pointed out that the RTÉ exit poll on the day of the last general election showed that a high proportion of voters only made up their minds at the last minute.
Ms Shortall said there was a “nervousness” among voters that “if Fine Gael are not controlled” they would decimate the numbers in the public service. She claimed the Fine Gael target of 30,000 redundancies in the public service could not be achieved without one in six nurses and two teachers in every school losing their jobs.
Under Fine Gael’s plan, she said, “frontline services simply cannot be preserved”.