THE STATE training agency, Fás, is to help unemployed construction workers get work abroad, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan told the Dáil.

Ms Coughlan said Fás was providing retraining opportunities in emerging areas within the sector.

This, she said, included retraining in the installation of sustainable technologies, environmental activity and compliance and regulatory work.

"Fás will also assist individuals in any way they can in seeking employment abroad in construction in other EU countries," Ms Coughlan added.

She said the Government had put in place a series of measures to facilitate redundant apprentices in completing their studies.

These included allowing them to progress their next off-the-job phase of training without having to do the next phase.

Fás, she added, had already established a register of redundant apprentices by trade to identify those people at the earliest possible time.

The agency had prioritised the need to locate an employer to sponsor completion of off-the-job training.

The Minister said her department and Fás would continue to monitor the trends and activities in the industry, and would work with all the relevant stakeholders to ensure timely and satisfactory responses to assist redundant construction workers and apprentices to secure alternative employment.

Ms Coughlan said the Government was investing €377 million this year in community employment schemes with a view to maintaining overall numbers on Fás schemes at last year's levels.

Ms Coughlan was responding to a Labour Private Members' motion calling on the Government to launch a major programme to counter the rise in unemployment.

This would include a major school-building programme to move up to 40,000 children out of prefabs.

The motion also called for a national insulation scheme, a substantial investment programme in skills and retraining and a strengthening of the role of the county enterprise boards.

Labour's enterprise, trade and employment spokesman Willie Penrosesaid the number of unemployed - currently over 240,000 - would fill Croke Park three times on All-Ireland day.

He claimed that the Government's apathy and complacency was deeply embedded.

"There is, possibly, an inability at the core of Government to actually confront the issue," he said.

"They have had it so good for so long that they actually do not know . . . They have been complacent and apathetic."

He accused the Government of listening to economists "employed as cheerleaders by banks" who tried to persuade people the boom would last forever.

He added that building and selling houses to one another was not a sustainable basis for economic growth.

"It is also clear that by the late 1990s the construction industry no longer needed the plethora of incentives that had been put in place to encourage activities in the 1980s," said Mr Penrose.

Minister of State for Education Sean Haugheysaid a committee of senior officials from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Finance was preparing an implementation plan on lifelong learning which would be completed by early next year.