David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the group for its presentation and the document it submitted to us. From my perspective, any report or proposal which seeks to radically overhaul the education system in a progressive manner is something to be welcomed, and this certainly does that. Any proposals which would ensure that students are equipped with the skills for life and work are ones I would support. There are some very good concepts in this report, and we should devote more time to its consideration and perhaps invite in some other groups to examine best practice in other European countries. I agree that other European countries are ahead of us in some of these areas, especially in the area of apprenticeships. They have a different approach which is much better in terms of the benefits derived from it by the person undertaking the apprenticeship.

I have some questions about a number of issues. While the focus of the model the group proposed is ICT skills, it is also relevant to a number of other sectors, and possibly even more relevant, but every region is different and regions major in different sectors. This type of model would be good for the agrifood sector, manufacturing - the German model is based pretty much on manufacturing and the Germans are very good at it - financial services and ICT. I would have a problem with the model if its sole focus was ICT in that some multinational companies in the ICT sector here tend to employ people in the sales, marketing and administration side of the business. The hi-tech jobs such as those in research and development tend not to be provided outside of the US, although there are some of those jobs in the UK. While the jobs in that sector here are welcome, the vast majority of them are in the sales end of the business. For example, in the case of Google, 70% of the jobs here are in sales, 22% are in administration and 8% in engineering. In the case of Facebook, 45% of the jobs are in sales and 10% are in engineering, although it established its first research and development facility outside the US in London. The vast majority of jobs in the ICT sector, unfortunately, tend to be in sales, which would not be best suited to this model. While the model is excellent and I would support it, we need to examine it in the context of not only the ICT sector but other sectors.

One of the issues for multinational companies in the ICT sector is skill shortages, an issue on which Senator Deirdre Clune recently published a report. The lack of language skills is frequently raised. Do the delegates have views on that issue?

A point I have made at this committee is that we consider ICT from a particular perspective, yet we do not have an ICT model in secondary school, which is bizarre, given the changes in technology. Have the delegates considered this issue and would they support such a scheme?

This model would be very good for different sectors such as manufacturing and agrifood. Do the delegates support my viewpoint? We are an island nation with a single labour market. Have the delegates conducted research on what is being done in Northern Ireland?