asked the Minister for Labour if the National Manpower Service have ever completed a national manpower study and if not, the proposals, if any, to do so.

I am not quite certain what Deputy Mitchell has in mind by his reference to a "national manpower study". A number of studies in the general manpower area have taken place in recent years. The most comprehensive of these was the OECD Examination of Manpower Policy in Ireland published in 1974, for which a background report was prepared by the National Manpower Service in 1972. In the early 1970s also the Manpower Service was active in drawing up forecasts of worker supply and demand at various levels of skills and co-operated with the Department of Education in this area at that time. Forecasting had to be dropped, however, when the usefulness of existing statistics especially the 1971 census figures, had been exhausted.

Other studies on more limited aspects of manpower matters have also taken place in recent years. For instance, the National Manpower Service have for many years carried out local labour availability surveys to establish the supply of workers in particular areas and in addition have carried out national surveys each year since 1975.

I have recently arranged, with the agreement of the Manpower Consultative Committee, that the Manpower Service resume forecasting of the labour market situation on the basis of information accumulated by the service themselves, by AnCO, the IDA, the educational authorities and by employer, industrial and trade union organisations and information acquired by the General Statistics Office by way of the labour market sample surveys carried out in 1975 and 1977.

Would the Minister clarify the situation? Is it a fact that the National Manpower Services had not itself got the national manpower study and therefore did not know what sort of skills it should be seeking or placing and, secondly, that the same information was not available to the IDA?

The Deputy will be aware that there are two very strong contributing factors to that situation. One was the lack of recruitment to the National Manpower Service during the Coalition's term of office and the second was the lack of usefulness or exhaustion, as I said in the reply, of the statistical value of the 1971 Census seeing that there was no following census to replace it with relevant and necessary information.

Would the Minister not agree that one of the great needs in the job-creation effort is for proper manpower forecasting? Could he tell us in more detail what exactly he has done to improve the situation and when, for instance, we might expect the manpower report?

As I said in my reply—obviously the Deputy had his supplementaries prepared before it—I have recently arranged with the agreement of the Manpower Consultative Committee that the National Manpower Service resume forecasting of the labour market situation on the basis of information accumulated by itself and the other Government agencies. I have made those arrangements.

Will the National Manpower Service issue a manpower report?

Yes. A report for the last quarter of last year will be the first one and I would hope that will be available next month. More precisely, from the first quarter of this year I intend to make this a permanent feature.