I was late for the Minister's speech because I had to be somewhere else. I have read it and I like the fact that reference was made to the four Ds. I am sure some people in this building will remember the three Cs or whatever the other letters were years ago in education. The three Rs-----

Sentiment score: 0.17

That is exactly it. We now have the four Ds. I agree with many of the points the Minister made. We are educating our children and young people leaving secondary school. In terms of where they go on, the starting point is what level people are at when they do the leaving certificate or leaving certificate applied. Many do not know how to open a bank account, change a tyre on a bike or car or do many practical things because we have put them into a system from which they almost have to be deprogrammed. They have to develop critical thinking skills in first year in college. My daughter had to do that in order to start to think about real-life things as opposed to what is taught by means of the leaving certificate syllabus. That is for a different Department and another day. When it comes to learning at third level, we have to examine a number of things. The Minister spoke about broadening first year post-leaving certificate and post leaving certificate applied courses and making them more general. I would love to see that. I often speak about the love of learning, which is something I am very passionate about. The rest of this contribution will probably be about where we are, the skills we need for an economy and so on, but my fundamental starting point on education is the love of learning and passion because that is what will drive us forward. When somebody works in a job they love, they will do really well. It is the same when they are studying. We need to examine what we are offering. I agree with what a previous speaker said. The Minister's focus on apprenticeships is most welcome. The easier we can make the transfer from second level to third level and into apprenticeships the better. At a meeting of the further and higher education committee when young apprentices explained the process of applying to be an apprentice I was struck by how complex the process is. Everybody else fills out a CAO form, which is not easy and which is quite complex. For a parent it can be quite daunting, in particular a parent who may never have applied through the CAO. We need to make the apprenticeship process more streamlined. As another Deputy stated, we need to take account of young people not in employment, education or training. I talk about community training centres quite a lot. I will speak about one I visited during the week, namely Cherry Orchard Community Training Centre. It has tied-in equine services. People can learn to work with horses, including equine therapy and working in stable management. That is the sort of practical skills that CTCs have. It is the same with Youthreach and local training initiatives, LTIs. I could not come in here and not say that we need to sort out the contracts for CTCs and LTIs. Organisations are working to assist young people who found mainstream education did not fit how they learned, which is ultimately what the difficulty is. I refer to adult and further education. Community education is important to make sure that anybody who has not had the opportunity to go to third level straight after school has an opportunity to go back and learn. In this country, we have a massive issue with people who still do not have appropriate numeracy and literacy abilities. Adult education services and organisations like the National Adult Literacy Agency, NALA, are there to make sure people are at the appropriate level because they cannot be left behind, yet they have been for a long time. On that basis, some of the skills we need to be looking at come under one of the Ds the Minister mentioned, namely, digital and AI skills. Whether we like it or not, the reality is AI is here and we need to find a mechanism to be able to use it to our advantage and make sure that everybody is using it in all different sectors but in an appropriate and ethical way. With that comes cybersecurity and data analysis training. What does that mean in all of the different sectors we will be working with? There is also software engineering, cloud computing and digital skills for all sectors - small- and medium-sized enterprises, but also for the public sector. We are in here. How are people dealing with it in the Civil Service? How are we dealing with all of these things? The Minister mentioned industry and education collaboration, which is really important because we need those partnerships. One cannot exist without the other. We cannot be training and running loads of programmes at third level that have no relevance whatsoever. In a way, we have that in second level. There is stuff that is not relevant to anything. It is outdated, outmoded and we have done it for years. We need to change that, and that is what is good about the leaving cert reform. We need to make sure that industry and education are connected, not only in the technical universities or the further education training centres, but also at apprenticeship level. Coming back to lifelong learning for a second, we need a modular basis for learning that is also stackable. I had the pleasure of opening the exhibition for the students in the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, RHA, the other day. They can do modules or they can do a two-year course. I will come back to the Minister at a later stage because the RHA does not have Higher Education Authority, HEA, status and there is something amiss there. It was fantastic to meet those students because they told me that they could come in and do one module and, later, they could do another. It fits into their lifestyle, which is important. We need to ask if it can be online or hybrid. There is the mid-career change issue. There are several of us sitting in this Chamber who have changed jobs mid-career to become politicians. That is the same for everybody. People change careers. It is not like years ago when you started, went into a job and stayed in it for 45 or 50 years. The other things I want to talk about are research and innovation ecosystems. How do we do that? How do we have start-up incubators? Where do they fit within that? Somebody mentioned the regions earlier. We need to move out of Dublin; we do not all live in Dublin. We need stronger technological transfer supports within that ecosystem. We have talked about green skills and the climate a lot and the fact that we might miss those targets now. If we are not using now as the catalyst for moving into all areas of climate, we will really fall behind. Part of that is looking at what technologies we need and where we are with regard to renewables, sustainable construction, the circular economy and all of that sort of stuff. There is a student who has been on work experience with me for the last little while. She will be heading off to do a master's degree next year in an institution in this country. It will cost €9,000. If we want to have things like that, master's programmes cannot be that expensive. That is prohibitive for many people. We are very strong on pharmaceuticals in this country. We need to look at biotech and the capacity there with regard to life sciences, automation and robotics. Since I have come into this role, I have met a number of people who are working in that industry. We need to support them much more but there needs to be link, not just between people who are working in that industry and third level, but also back to second level. It starts in second level. In fact, I would say it starts in primary school. There are two final points I want to make. All of that said, there are two areas that are really important. None of this will be of any use to anyone if we are not making sure it is inclusive and there is social mobility within it. We cannot leave behind anybody because they live in a socio-economically disadvantaged or rural area, they are a mature student or they have been displaced by AI or automation. We need to make sure we are focusing on that. Regarding disability and other support services, as education spokesperson, I daily hear about the number of children who are identified as having additional needs. We are far behind where we need to be with support services for children and adults who have disabilities. We need to make sure that we are training occupational therapists, OTs, speech and language therapists, SLTs, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists and all of those people who can make sure that the disabled person is getting the supports they need. We have a huge issue in this country with mental health and we do not have the support services we need. There are huge waiting lists. In terms of skills, we need not only everything on the technological side, but also a human perspective. We need to have people who are trained, have the capacity and passion to work with people of all ages who have mental health problems or disabilities, and are supported to reach their best potential. I could not leave this conversation without saying that. While a lot of what I have said is about the pharmaceutical industry or technical aspects, but at the end of this, we need to make sure that every person in this country has the capacity to learn and work to the best of their ability. We need to ensure there are all the supports around that.

Sentiment score: 0.15