Mr. Tony O'Donnell:

I shall commence by responding to Senator Clune's last point on direct liaison. There is a third level computer forum. Last Thursday I attended such a forum along with senior research and development figures from IBM, Google, a number of other companies and the heads of IT departments from all of the institutes of technology and universities. The industry is willing to provide input on the nature and curriculum of courses, the types of computing language as mentioned by Deputy Tom Fleming, and on the projects that students should undertake in order to be prepared for the industry. The third level sector in Ireland is open to our input, bar one or two institutions. Focus on that type of interaction is sometimes driven by the personalities who run the departments and when they change direction may slip a little. The industry is happy with the nature of the courses. In terms of what Deputy Tom Fleming said, it could be counter productive for the industry to think any other way about the quality of computing courses here.

As I said at the outset, there is a lack of people emerging from the courses. A number of the programmes in Ireland are highly rated internationally. There is a demonstrative capacity in third level if the courses are provided with the appropriate cohort of input students who have the aptitude to make the most of an academic career path. We want students to come out the other end and we want courses to deliver high quality and high calibre people. We have found there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The academic route is not always the most appropriate. It works very well if the right people join but clearly we must investigate other routes.

The apprentice model is one which has had huge success during long international experience as a method for delivering people to the market. It would complement wonderfully what we are already doing very well within the academic sector.