Fas Ireland Jobs

Eoghan Harris: Cannon must save craft skills to rebuild manufacturing base ...

Ciaran Cannon, the Minister for Skills, and Paul O'Toole, boss of Solas, must make sure that when throwing out former Fas boss Rody Molloy's cloudy bathwater they do not also throw out the healthy Fas babies: the craft skills which are still the envy of countries like Australia and New Zealand.

FAS had a few fat cats at the top -- rightly exposed by Shane Ross and Nick Webb -- and some of the courses it farmed out to the private sector were flawed. But Fas craft courses gave massive value for money. And not only craft courses.

The facts speak for themselves. As the recession began to bite, Fas took on tens of thousands of unemployed workers. At a time when its own staff numbers were falling, the numbers of those it trained jumped from 30,000 to 110,000, a productivity increase of 300 per cent.

Irish craft training is highly regarded abroad. In June 2009, the Australian government asked a University of Sydney team to report on how other industrialised countries were supporting their apprenticeship system during the current downturn. The team found few had done anything useful -- with one exception. "Ireland appears to be one of the few countries with a comprehensive, substantive strategy for mitigating the impact of its very deep recession on apprentices."

The Australian report only made two recommendations -- the first may surprise you. Recommendation 1: "Build on the Irish experience as well as emerging initiatives concerning short-time work and green skills to meet short-run needs."

Australian respect for Irish craft training does not stop there. The nation even wants Irish trainees who have not completed full Fas training. In recent weeks you may have noticed posters asking apprentices to come to Australia with the catchy slogan: "No Papers? No Problem."

The Australians have good reason to respect Irish skills. In 2005, Ireland came fifth in the World Skills Competition. We were only pipped by tiger economies like Korea, Switzerland and Germany. Thanks to Thatcher's myopic policy of taking craft training away from state agencies and entrusting it to employers, the UK trailed five places behind us.

Fas's good work was washed away by the behaviour of the Fas top brass. But alarm bells should go off in our heads when the new body, Solas, talks about "a shift away from skills provision for traditional occupations like construction which have seen a huge fall in employment".

So we must stop training electricians, plumbers and carpenters just because Tom Parlon's builders blew the boom and now have no jobs for them? But there are no jobs for solicitors and teachers either. So why don't we close down the Law Library and the universities?

SOLAS

SOLAS is the new name of FAS. Regardless of the way the government is trying to paint the picture, FAS is still alive and well. All the staff are safe, all the decision makers and all the way to the Board of Directors in FAS. The internal organisation is to change a bit, but in essence same people that made FAS what it is, and you have probably made your mind up about that, these same people are automatically now all safe in their jobs in SOLAS. Same desks, same offices, same jobs, just a change of the logo and the name. Probably a nice gig for some marketing and rebranding agency.

From the recruitment perspective FAS was a failure. Statistics are showing that job seekers that got the FAS training were less likely to get a job than those that didn’t. When I first saw it, it seemed unbelievable. A Government agency managing to achieve the opposite from what is its main goal. Like a Department of Finance that works successfully on bringing the country to the bankruptcy. Not a good example?

FAS staff cannot be fired basically. Regardless of the company performance. Now how cool is that? Imagine working in an average Irish SME that does not make any revenue, any service, any product, and profit. And all your co-workers have a safe job in the company. You go bankrupt, they just change the name on the front door. And keep on doing (or not) what you always was. Wonderland? Communism?

FAS.ie was set up as a web site where every Irish company could advertise their jobs, and job seekers could find them. In the time that FAS.ie was ‘operating’, there was a long list of private companies that realised how well FAS operates. They took that role and delivered a great service to Irish Employers and job seekers for many years. From Irish Times on Friday, to IrishJobs.ie, Jobs.ie and of course not to forget EmployIreland.ie! 

With FAS being repainted with SOLAS colours, should we expect that their new web site will actually provide a service FAS.ie was built for? Same people, same (no) agenda and a new colours, is there a reason to expect a different results? Well know. And this is what hurts me. FAS (oops, SOLAS since yesterday sorry) was built with a really great idea. A free service (eh,… OK there is an army of people on its payroll paid by taxpayer) that facilitates getting the best available candidates to fill the vacancies in Irish companies. If this task is done right, if he best people available in Ireland is hired for each vacancy that appears, and that done fast, this reduces the recruitment cost and increases the speed. Less overheads for Irish companies, makes them more profitable and hence more competitive internationally. So poor FAS.ie contributed to development of a number of Irish businesses being set up that took the role FAS.ie leave vacant. This created jobs in those companies, and tremendous wealth within a handful of the job site owners. On the other side it made hiring staff in Ireland more expensive for the Irish companies. That in essence made Ireland less competitive as a country to do business in.

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