Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

I thank the Chairman for the good wishes. I look forward to working with the committee and helping it in anyway I can as we move forward. I will keep this brief as I know the committee really wants to hear from the WorldSkills team. On behalf of SOLAS, the HEA and WorldSkills Ireland, I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity today to celebrate the excellent performance by a brilliant team of young apprentices, trainees and students at the WorldSkills Competition in Russia in August. I am delighted to be joined today by members of the team, including Ray English, chair of WorldSkills Ireland, and his colleagues, and Vivienne Patterson of the HEA.

I would like to provide a short overview of the WorldSkills competition, and explain how SOLAS, the HEA and the Department of Education and Skills and provide support to the Irish team. The WorldSkills competition, which is held every two years, has a 60-year history and is the biggest vocational education and skills event in the world. The competitors represent the best of their peers in 56 different skills and are selected from skills competitions in over 77 WorldSkills' member countries and regions. The Department of Education and Skills introduced national and international skills competitions to Ireland in 1957 and Ireland has taken part in every single competition since. Funding of almost €400,000 for the WorldSkills team comes through a number of sources, namely, SOLAS, the HEA and the Education and Training Boards Ireland, ETBI.

WorldSkills Kazan took place from 22 to 27 August. It involved 63 countries, more than 1,300 competitors, and had over 200,00 visitors. The opening and closing ceremonies, which were held in the Kazan Stadium, were attended by more than 40,000 people and were broadcast live on Russian TV to approximately 45 million viewers. Ceremonies were also streamed live on the Internet - I know many people in Ireland tuned in - so that everybody could be part of these Olympic-style spectacular shows. The closing ceremony was addressed live by President Putin.

The WorldSkills Conference, which was run in parallel to the competitions, included contributions from people such as Scott Kelly, a NASA astronaut, and our very own Minister of State with responsibility for skills, Deputy John Halligan. The Irish team was made up of 17 young apprentices, trainees and students. They are Cormac Thompson, Allanagh O’Sullivan, Ryan Dempsey, Luke O’Keeffe, Jack Lynch, Olivier Bal-Pétré, Hanna Mathe, Glen McNamara, Adam Flynn, Mark Wasson, Megan Yeates, Patrick Twomey, Jack O’Donnell, Ruairí Grealish, Jennifer Mangan, Christopher Kehoe, and Ryan McLoughlin. They showcased their skills in the areas of aircraft maintenance; beauty therapy; building information modelling; bricklaying; cabinet-making; cloud computing; construction metal work; cookery; electrical installation; freight forwarding; industrial mechanic millwright; joinery; plumbing and heating; restaurant service; visual merchandising; and welding.

The competitors spent several months prior to the competition being trained by experts at TU Dublin; the institutes of technology in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Dundalk, Carlow and Athlone; the education and training boards in Kerry, Waterford, Wexford, Limerick, Clare, Donegal and Dublin-Dún Laoghaire; and Shannon College of Hotel Management.

The training and the hard work paid off. Ireland has a long history of winning medals and Medallions for Excellence and this year was no different. The team won four gold medals, one bronze medal, a Best of Nation medal, and seven Medallions for Excellence. Ireland is also now ranked tenth in the world for skills in terms of the medal rankings. I am sure the members will hear from the team themselves in more detail about this remarkable achievement.

Ireland has also been chosen to host the next WorldSkills General Assembly and Conference which will take place on 5 to 8 October 2020 in Dublin and plans are progressing to finalise this and the next Ireland Skills Live event, following the success of the inaugural event in March this year.

I would like to conclude by saying that WorldSkills competitions are an excellent way to promote Ireland’s skills to a global audience. Our brilliant teams benchmark the quality of further education, training and skills against the best in the world. They are also incredible role models here at home for anyone considering their post-secondary education choices.