Mr. Brendan McGinty:

A number of the issues that have been raised to my mind amount to asking where the opportunities are to make further progress. I do not think that can be answered without getting into some of the granularity because there are different issues in different sectors and different regions. I will raise it up one level to say the following, namely, that we really must get on top of the challenge that lies immediately ahead. As I said in my opening statement, the future of jobs agenda is not an issue for the future, it is for today. Thankfully, we are heading for full employment. We know that we are only going to be able to add somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 at working age in terms of the population. That means employers will be under a lot of pressure to find new skills and talent. We can do what we can around net immigration, and that is happening already, but the real issue is how we improve the productivity of the economy to contribute to economic growth and to sustain jobs and lifestyle for people. A key instrument of that is boosting the skill set we have in the working population.

Below that, we are seeing a lot of innovation happening. One of the things to which we in Skillnet Ireland are very committed is working with enterprise. A key question was asked about how we get enterprise engaged. One of the key issues is working with it very strongly on workforce planning, development and bringing innovation to help people solve some of those talent problems and creating opportunities for workers to develop.

Senator Gallagher asked about female participation. I will give one very simple example. In the ICT sector, companies are crying out for skilled people to come and work in them. The level of female participation has been an issue, with women, understandably, stepping out of their career, for example, to raise a family for a few years or to do other things. For example, through Technology Ireland a programme has been put in place called Women ReBOOT, which is about reconnecting with women who were working in the sector, had taken time out and, because of the pace of change in the sector, had lost touch with what was happening in terms of skills.

We now have 20 of the largest technology companies in Ireland participating in the programme, which is getting women back into the sector and re-equipping and reskilling them and building their confidence. This has been a great success. That is granular and only one small example but it is the kind of thing that has to be done to build these sorts of responses.

Senator Gallagher asked a question about incentivisation. There is an issue with regard to how we get enterprise more involved. This is a major challenge for small and medium enterprises, SMEs, on which we are primarily focused. The reason that is important at a macro level is that we recognise there is a major productivity deficit challenge, which is being masked by what is happening in the multinational sector. At a superficial level, our productivity numbers are looking pretty good. If we strip out the performance of the multinational sector, however, what we see is that productivity is relatively low, particularly in the SME sector. The issue tends to arise in harder to reach areas such as parts of the construction sector, domestic services, hospitality, etc. These sectors require a greater level of incentivisation to increase the commitment of employers to the types of tasks we are discussing in respect of participation in workforce training. That extends across all levels. This is about saying that we need a number of key things to happen at the same time, in particular lifelong learning must be incentivised and sold to companies. Generally speaking, levels of participation currently stand at approximately 8.5%. The policy commitment is to double that figure to about 15%. While that commitment is welcome, we need to accelerate the process.

At all levels of the education and training system, we need to inculcate a culture of agile learning on the part of workers. The systems we bring, including policy delivery and service support, have to be about preparing for the repurposing of skills and training. I ask the committee to remember, as the World Economic Forum has pointed out, that by 2022, which is only a short number of years away, 54% of all workers will need some level of reskilling or upskilling. That is one hell of a challenge and we need to be ahead of that in the competition for inward investment and to ensure job sustainability and in sustaining our regions. The regions are where many of our SMEs are located and they are sustaining jobs outside of the major urban centres. We have a significant role to play in that regard owing to our strong reach into every region and every sector. However, we have more to do.