O'Keeffe urged to use 'imagination' over graduate jobless

AN ESTIMATED 100,000 graduates were unemployed in the Republic, Fine Gael’s Deirdre Clune told the Dáil.

She urged Minister for Enterprise Batt O’Keeffe to “use his imagination and initiative” to extend the internship programme and ensure that organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors took them on.

“A major investment has been made in these people in terms of their education, but the economy will be at a loss of many of them who will go abroad, while many more depend on the jobseeker’s allowance,” Ms Clune added.

Mr O’Keeffe said he would obtain the figure for the number of unemployed graduates, “but the figure is certainly not 100,000”.

There were placements available to graduates, he said.

“In the past week I took the trouble of speaking to two recruitment agencies, one of which informed me that recruitment had increased by 26 per cent in retail, wholesale and purchasing, by 21 per cent in production, manufacturing and materials, by 12 per cent each in engineering and utilities and in the medical, professional and healthcare areas,” Mr O’Keeffe added.

“Another agency informed me that professional recruitment had increased in the third-quarter by 40 per cent, compared to the third-quarter of 2009.”

Mr O’Keeffe said he had spoken to people in his units to ascertain how many graduates could be allocated internships in his department. However, a problem for many graduates was that there would be a cost in getting to work and in being there.

Under current legislation, any payments made by multinationals to graduate trainees would affect their social welfare payments, he said.

The current position could only be changed through legislation, and he was negotiating with the Minister for Social Protection on the matter.

Ms Clune said Ibec’s GradLink programme accommodated only 38 graduates, a drop in the ocean.

“These programmes need to be ramped up because progress is much too slow,” she added. “Graduates from 2010 have now joined 2009 graduates in the employment market.”

Mr O’Keeffe said the Government was pursuing an enterprise approach to employment creation.