Ms Tracey Donnery:

Skillnet Ireland is founded on collaboration. We empower enterprise. It is an enterprise-led model. In addition to the 60 industry bodies that we work with which either run a Skillnet business network or one of our national initiatives, they in turn partner with all the universities. We partner with IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Bord Bia and many other Government agencies. Through those collaborations, there are opportunities to develop bespoke solutions for enterprise that meets the needs they have, whether that is skills needed for digitalisation, sustainability, housing or advanced manufacturing. That allows enterprise to take on the challenge of designing a programme that really suits their needs and designing new programmes where needed with the universities or with further education. That enables and empowers the businesses to drive innovation and introduce new business practices.

The Deputy mentioned advanced manufacturing. Something we have done a lot recently is to develop out new programmes in robotics and artificial intelligence and the interaction between those. That has helped drive advanced manufacturing across biopharma, medtech and other types of production facilities.