Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have already raised this issue with the Minister, but I am going to raise it again to keep it on the agenda. It concerns the funding of software costs. I know that significant funding has been allocated at third level in the area of hardware to try to close the digital divide and allow people participate in an off-campus way, but we need to keep an eye on the software issue because there are some packages that are still not funded, as I understand it.

The second issue I wish to raise is on the percentage of the labour force in the national qualification framework levels. The numbers of people remaining at levels 1 to 3 remains stubbornly high at 18%, and it shows that one of the areas in which we do not well in education this country is lifelong learning. I would like the Minister to comment on that issue and whether funding is being allocated to tackle it specifically.

The third issue relates to equality budgeting. The Minister's Department was involved in a pilot scheme, and we have already seen great success in this area. The number of women involved in apprenticeships jumped from 145 in 2017 to 622 in 2019, which is excellent progress. We saw similar results in the film industry where there was another pilot programme run by the Department of the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin. Is equality budgeting going anywhere, however, and have the successes been fed back to the Department of Finance or the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform?