Ms Carol Hanney:

I accept what the Senator is saying about communication. We often say ourselves that we are too busy doing it to tell people we are doing it. It is an area we must work on more. We have an industrial liaison division in our ETB, which is quite a new departure in the past year and a half. In addition, our individual colleges all have liaison with industry. Much of it is through work experience because all our FET students do work experience.

We have significant connections there, built up very often by the heads of departments or the people who are running the different courses. We have guidance counsellors in the FET colleges who liaise with guidance counsellors at second level. We also have open days in all of the colleges. About four years ago, we started doing what we called FET Expo, a one-day exhibition of everything that we offer across FET in the ETB.