THE European Commission has called on the Government to ensure greater efficiency in the way it spends almost £1 billion in European social funds.
The warning was delivered by the EU Commissioner for Social Affairs, Mr Padraig Flynn, who expressed concern yesterday at the findings of two reports that are both highly critical of the poor use of funds to assist early school leavers and the disabled.
Mr Flynn said he had written to the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Mr Bruton to request that "concrete proposals" be developed to address the weaknesses identified in the reports drawn up by the ESF evaluation unit, a spending watchdog based in Mr Bruton's department.
Each year, 14,500 young people leave school with inadequate qualifications, the unit found. Yet the proportion of education spending on this group has declined, and only 5,500 training places are available for early school leavers each year.
The Irish education system is "failing" early school leavers, many of whom would drift into crime and drug abuse unless proper education and training are provided, according to the report on early school leavers published earlier this year.
Mr Flynn told a meeting of Government officials and the social partners in Castlebar, Co Mayo, yesterday that "decisive action" was needed to increase the number of training places. Additional ESF funding, available to Ireland this year, should be targeted on this area.
The Commissioner said the social fund could play a major role in promoting equality in training. Only 35 out of 1,980 apprentices or less than 2 per cent and only 2.5 per cent of farm trainees were women, he said.
Mr Flynn has also asked the Department of Health and the National Rehabilitation Board to improve the quality of training for the disabled. The evaluation unit found that, in spite of spending of over £700 million by the State and the EU on training initiatives, the labour market remained largely closed to the disabled. Only 7 per cent of trainees with disabilities went on to open employment.
Mr Flynn warned that if the recommendations contained in the evaluation reports were not followed up, then not only was time and effort wasted, but the potential to improve the quality and impact of actions would be lost.
