Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

We announced a new further education and training strategy earlier in the week. Effectively, we will have a range of different initiatives funded by SOLAS, the majority of which is funded now via the education and training boards with effect from 1 July when all the training centres transfer over. They will be funding what was previously further education and training, which took place in the training centres but also the training that was outsourced by the training centres. A good proportion of the FÁS budget is on outsourced training such as the money in the community training workshops. A range of initiatives across further education and training will be funded by SOLAS. The big advantage of having such an organisation is that we will have a coherent approach for funding, policy and regulation of the further education and training sector to parallel the arrangements in place with the Higher Education Authority in the higher education sector. SOLAS will not be like FÁS in terms of organising the national delivery of programmes. To a large extent it will work through the ETBs which are organising that. That does not mean that SOLAS will not be able to organise some programmes centrally itself.