Professor Robbie Gilligan:

The Trinity College Dublin bachelor's degree programme has a very longstanding historic provision to admit a substantial proportion of mature students, that is, people over 23 years of age. Trinity College Dublin pioneered this approach in higher education going way back but it is certainly a strong part of the social work education tradition in Trinity College Dublin. It is important to think of age as well as another variable in diversity. People entering social work later in life may bring some extra experience and insights but it is also important to have people from different social backgrounds. Our access programmes provide a pathway that opens up to people from different social backgrounds for social work courses, as for other courses, and we do see more ethnic minority or immigrant background students appearing in our classrooms, which we are very pleased to see.

Those issues are an important element of the whole workforce planning, the aim of which is that we have a workforce that reflects the people who are using the services.