Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

I will pick up on Deputy Ó Ríordáin's question as well. Obviously, dealing with youth unemployment and providing young people with opportunities at top skills has been part of the DNA of further education and training for a long time. As we mentioned, we have the apprenticeship incentivisation scheme for employers, which is trying to persuade employers to take that chance and take on young people. There is also a whole range of programmes in further education and training, FET, that are specifically designed to help young people to upskill and to take them directly into jobs and employment. In Youthreach, we have specific skills training and a significant amount of post-leaving certificate, PLC, provision which has incredible success at taking people into really interesting jobs and careers, together with community training centre provision. The key for us is to mobilise that provision and ensure the capacity is there to deal with this immense demand that we have at present, which both Deputies have identified as being a real issue and concern. We are trying to ensure that the places are available.

There is also a cultural issue where there is a large number of young people who cannot walk into jobs, no matter how insecure they previously would have been, and have no access to any income-earning potential. They probably do not think of further education and training or even an apprenticeship as a viable option because there has been that predominance of higher education choices almost as part of the psyche. We need to focus on trying to persuade them that there are opportunities out there, even online opportunities through e-college. We could perhaps also look at the system of support that we give them. For example, SUSI support is available for all higher education and PLC provision but if one wants to do a traineeship at the same level, level 5 or level 6 as PLC, one does not have access to SUSI, instead one is asked to sign on for welfare support to take one through the course. That type of system creates a kind of divide and a perception that that type of upskilling and help is not for certain people but this is a key focus and an issue. We have put in place an initiative called Skills to Compete which is all about addressing those structural issues in the labour market as a result of Covid-19. This is a three-pronged initiative. One is about giving the person the employability skills that will help him or her to get a job.

Second, it is about giving people access to the digital skills they will need for any job in the future world of work. Third, it is about targeting skills in specific occupations. That might be technology, green skills, energy and opportunities like those. There is a whole range of responses and I am happy to follow up with a more detailed outline of what they are.