Mr. Keith Moynes:

Senator Jim D'Arcy asked what is the right level for higher education participation and Mr. Tony Donohue mentioned at the start that Irish society attaches a particular esteem to higher education. From the point of view of the system, the key question for us is what is the right mix for the individual and for society. There is a diversity of models that must form part of any system that bring us to what is the right answer for society. We have a very high participation level in higher education and graduate employment levels are back to where they were at pre-crisis levels. Much of the investment in higher education is paying off but clearly there must be other models and apprenticeship must be a part of that. There are initiatives such as Springboard, to return to Deputy O'Brien's point about the transferability of skills, under which people are being reskilled and there is a further education and training strategy. The key question is about the mix and the individual. The learner must be at the heart of this together with the skills that they need. We have a high level of participation, but increasing employer engagement within that system and giving people different avenues into the system will all form part of the mix, rather than a binary way of looking at it where it is either higher education or nothing. That is the mix we would like to take as a system and that is informing where we are going.