Ms Tracey Donnery:

Senator Dolan mentioned SMEs and multinationals. Skillnet Ireland provides opportunities for businesses to collaborate and determine their skills needs. Key to what we will be doing is ensuring all businesses will have the opportunity to develop the talent they need. One of the strengths of the model is that we enable smaller businesses to work alongside larger multinationals to develop the skills needed for the particular sector or region, including by horizon scanning and looking to see what is coming next. We ensure that the best practice of the larger companies, which can sometimes be more advanced, can be shared with the smaller companies.

The three things we will be doing with businesses include broadening the base of businesses we support. We already support all the larger companies and most mid-size companies but there are still plenty of smaller companies that we could support. We would be giving them opportunities to determine, using their own voice, what skills they need, particularly in the focus area of SME productivity. In this regard, there can be a very wide range of programmes, depending on the sector, be it aviation, nursing homes or manufacturing. It is also a matter of supporting the companies in developing the skills needed for digitalisation. I am referring to building digital skills, digital literacy and digital capacity, but also the capacity to understand digital models or changes to businesses and business models. In addition, we have recently launched our Climate Ready programme.