Feargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses very much indeed. I found this very interesting. I have been involved with Springboard in recent years and its job is to find people who have become unemployed because their skills are not needed. Most of them have been involved in building and construction and now they must find something else. They are going into senior or third level education. How did we end up in a situation so different from the German one? I can remember when many people did apprenticeships and for some reason that went out. Was that almost to do with a degree of snobbery that made people want to go into third level education and look down on apprenticeships? How do we get back to that? Mr. O'Donnell has just spoken about second level education. What do we have to do at second level? Does the problem arise before then?

Senator Cullinane spoke about the language situation and it seems to me that there are things we need to do. Is our education system influenced by the fact that we have much longer holidays than almost any other country in the world? There are three months free in the summer at second level, practically a month at Christmas and Easter and mid-term breaks too. Do we need to do something with the educational system or at a later stage? Springboard encourages, allows and arranges the courses that people can attend and it is frightening there to discover the participants' lack of IT skills. How do we go about dealing with this? Does it start at an earlier age? Is it too late to do it at senior or third level?