Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is useful to have Senator Higgins here in light of her experience with the other committee. There is obviously an interrelation between different Departments and committees. I wish to add some questions. I have a question for Ms Gallagher on the issue of people who are hard to reach. How do we bring in people who clearly will have difficulty with or a fear of engaging with various services, and difficulty in acknowledging and recognising the issues they have? Ms Gallagher mentioned people coming in through the Men's Sheds, which is an interesting way, and also through the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. What we would really like to get to in this committee is how we can improve opportunities and access for people who have difficulty with literacy. That is my first issue.

Second, Mr. O'Flaherty talked about Ireland's score in the PIAAC survey, which is not great as we are 19th out of 34. Ms Bailey talked about the national skills strategy and the targets therein. Will she expand on the aims within the national skills strategy, the percentages and what we need to do to reach the targets in the national skills strategy up to 2025? We need to be able to measure where we are going and what we are achieving, and how to get to the point we want to get to, where literacy is not a struggle for so many people.

Third, I want to ask Ms Bailey about the issue of struggling with language, to which Senator Higgins referred, for example, the difficulty of facing bureaucracy, etc. Ms Bailey's organisation has been campaigning for the use of plain language for a long time, so she might respond in regard to the difficulties people face, given the language used by bureaucracy, and what progress is being made.

I ask Ms Gallagher to respond first.