Dr. Brian Hughes:

Athy is in a flat plain, more or less, in south Kildare. Admittedly, it is not too far away from the Dublin-Wicklow mountains. However, people choose to live in locations with excellent environment. This has always been the case. That is why the golf courses and the historic bases of Drogheda make it so attractive, which might not be the case with Athy or some other towns. That is considered by people when making decisions on where to locate.

The other hugely important thing in all of this, particularly in terms of what Deputy Heydon was saying about youth unemployment and so on, is that we are experiencing a massive societal change in what is called the nature and change of work. That societal change means that there is an imperative to try to regard one's life as a whole of life. In other words, there is an imperative to use all of the time in that life to obtain as much education, learning, skills and development as one can, specifically in terms of the huge changes that are taking place in the nature of work.

Going back to Athy, therefore, or to any other town that might not have a specific educational institute or whatever else close by, I am not saying that this is necessarily always the case always but it is an important factor. In terms of skills training and opportunities for work, we see the Construction Industry Federation listing 115,000 jobs in a range of differing activities, for example. I have listed them in one of my appendices. We have to get back to skills training, particularly apprentices and so on. It is fantastic now to see the latest information in terms of the number of additional people employed. We are back to within approximately 120,000 of our 2006 high point, with 2.04 million people at work. The number of additional people working in each quarter is so encouraging. The hope would be that all young people would be encouraged, depending on their abilities and interests, to try to gain that education or work experience, particularly in the building industry and nursing. They talk about the number of additional nurses that we will need in Ireland. Resources are hugely important in that context to be able to fund health further. However, there are huge opportunities available now. We are in the fourth year of the fastest recovery of any European nation. We are in the fourth year of it. We have led that recovery in terms of the rate of growth. It is fantastic to see that now being translated into more employment opportunities.