Speech by Minister Micheál Martin at the official launch of the Fás one step up initiative

ON THURSDAY 15 ^TH SEPTEMBER 2005 AT 12.00 IN THE GREAT HALL, ROYAL HOSPITAL, KILMAINHAM, DUBLIN 8

Ladies and Gentlemen I am very pleased to be here today to officially launch the FAS One Step Up Initiative. This initiative represents further progress in the implementation of the Government’s Action Plan in response to the Enterprise Strategy Group report’s recommendations.

As someone who has been both a teacher and a Minister for Education, I have always been acutely conscious of the importance of education and training.

This One Step Up initiative is also the latest stage in the Government’s campaign to ensure that Ireland’s training and education systems continue to provide the skills our people will need to prosper in a globalised, knowledge-based economy. It represents a major advance in our efforts to ensure that we have the most educated and highly trained workforce possible.

The Government has already shown its commitment to this objective by providing FAS, this year with €35 million for the training of those in employment, to bring its total training budget this year to over €290 million.

FAS is putting the Government’s commitment into practice by using these resource to fund a variety of training projects which, for example, include:

Basic skills provision targeted at low skilled employees

Occupationally-specific upskilling for staff in sectors such as the engineering, motor and food industry sectors, and

Entrepreneurial development, including in particular in the SME sector.

I would like to particularly welcome the effective way in which FAS has advanced this initiative and the commitment it has shown to increasing its focus on training those in employment, in particular.

It is also important that, while this initiative seeks to engage with the workforce as a whole, many of the projects have a particular focus on those with low levels of skills and qualifications. Those with low skill levels are particularly vulnerable to changes in economic conditions and we must safeguard their position going forward. In my view this is key, so that everyone – and not just those in high skill occupations - can move One Step Up.

In this context, I would also mention the importance of the new Workplace Education Fund which has been given a budget of €2 million in 2005 to specifically address the needs of low-skilled workers with literacy and numeracy difficulties.

Responding to Enterprise Strategy Group’s Recommendations

As I said earlier, this One Step Up initiative is a key element in the implementation of the Government’s Action Plan to progress the Enterprise Strategy Group’s recommendations.

It was to help us plot the course of our economy into the future that the Government established the Enterprise Strategy Group. The Group reported on the policies necessary to compete successfully in the global economy. It made recommendations on strengthening how to strengthen competitiveness of Irish companies and to promote the development of a knowledge based and innovation-driven economy.

We all recognise that we must move up the value chain to higher value-added activities.

Education and training have been at the heart of our remarkable economic success since the early 1990s. Similarly, our future prosperity will also increasingly depend on workers engaged in knowledge-based sectors providing innovative solutions to customer requirements. Accordingly, the skills and training required in the past are not the same as that which we will need in the future.

It was in recognition of this that the Enterprise Strategy Group recommended that greater participation in lifelong learning be encouraged through a “One Step Up” initiative.

Lifelong learning will be key for us going forward, as the nature of the workplace requires that workers be ever more flexible and adaptable. Although the concept of lifelong learning is well established, participation by adults in education and training is still significantly underdeveloped here compared to other economies. We must therefore encourage greater participation in lifelong learning by facilitating and motivating employees to either:

Increase their skill levels and qualifications,

Acquire new skills and knowledge in new areas, or to

Renew existing skills to stay abreast of technology and other developments.

This is our agenda for the future.

We have to continue to foster the on-going acquisition of the knowledge and skills required to compete in an increasingly global economy. This can only be achieved by introducing new approaches to lifelong learning and by putting in place the necessary delivery structures. This One Step Up initiative is another move in that direction.

Economic and Employment Performance of recent years

Our recent economic success has been remarkable. The so-called “jobless growth” of the early 1990s has long since been replaced by consistent employment creation. The number of people at work has risen to over 2 million.

Nearly 95,000 new jobs were created over the last 12 months - the highest number in the last five years.

There are now more people working in Ireland than at any time since before the Great Famine and the numbers at work are set to increase even further. Even the CSO’s December 2004 forecast of a labour force of almost 2.4 million people by 2016 may now be somewhat on the conservative side.

As a result of the massive expansion in employment we have experienced over the past eight years, unemployment has more than halved from 171,000 to just 85,000. The number of long-term unemployed has fallen even more rapidly from 90,000 to 27,000, a drop of almost 70%. Women have in particular benefited from the massive growth in employment over the past eight years.

However, the rapid economic growth of recent years has created its own challenges. While the problems of success are infinitely preferable to the problems of failure, there are important issues, which must be addressed if our economy is to continue to prosper into the future. Today’s initiative is part of the process.

To conclude then, I would say that this One Step Up initiative marks a significance advance in the up-skilling of our workers. It signals the importance of continuing training and education, which is at the core of economic and social advancement. It provides training opportunities for all in the labour force, but especially for the low-skilled.

I therefore congratulate FÁS on their good work to date and I am confident that their efforts on this One Step Up initiative will make a major contribution to the upskilling of the Irish workforce into the future, to the benefit and prosperity of all.

Thank you very much.

ENDS

ETE 1412a