FAS is to train over 100,000 people this year, the highest-ever total, in an effort to bridge the skills gap in the Irish labour market.

It also intends to expand the use of the Internet to appeal to skilled workers abroad, according to its action plan for this year.

Its director-general, Mr John Lynch, said that the State training and employment agency would be making "significant organisational changes" in order to implement its Action Plan 2000. These would ensure that "FAS will make a major contribution to Ireland's economic and social development during the year".

A budget of £560 million (€711 million) is planned for 2000, of which £522 million will go into non-capital training and employment programmes.

The biggest increases in placements will go to specific skills training programmes, apprenticeships and workplace training.

The capital investment programme will go towards improving buildings and equipment, with priority going to apprenticeship programmes, new technology courses and making premises more accessible to people with disabilities. There are unemployment rates of over 70 per cent among the latter group.

There are now 21,000 apprentices, compared with 17,000 in 1998 and 10,800 in 1995. However, there will be further cutbacks in community employment placements as the focus turns increasingly towards giving people marketable skills. The numbers on community employment schemes fell by 3,000 last year and it is planned to reduce them by a further 2,000 this year to about 34,000.

Alternative courses will be provided for people as community employment places are reduced. These will include more places on the Job Initiative programme, which aims at providing fulltime, well-paid jobs for the longterm unemployed. The FAS programme for this year includes an increase in training places for women and the extension of the Government's Employment Action Plan to provide more help for older longterm unemployed people, early school-leavers and skilled workers from abroad.

The international FAS Jobs Ireland Campaign includes a website which has proved phenomenally successful since it was set up late last year.

The website is one of the top 10 Irish sites and has attracted over 500,000 hits. It has also led to 25,000 people registering their CVs with the site. These will be linked this year to the FAS jobs bank.