Mr. Tom Boland:

The anticipation is that, even with the current level of participation in higher education, we will have an increase of around 25% in student numbers until approximately 2028 through demographic growth alone. It is very significant amount which consists just of school leavers, by and large. Another major piece to be delivered is upskilling people, both those who did not have an opportunity to go into education earlier and those whose skills are now redundant or need additional honing. This is a very important piece of the higher education system for the future. We already have the Springboard programme, which accommodates approximately 6,000 students and has proven to be very successful in getting unemployed people back to work by giving them more relevant skills. The issue of the relevance of what the higher education institutions are doing for the economy and society keeps coming up. People need high-quality relevant skills.