Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. I have read the report. I have been engaging with Seamus Hoyne and a number of other people. My background is in education, including environmental education. I have worked with the HETAC model and used FETAC over the years, as well as mainstream physics and maths teaching. Therefore, I understand the system, the layering of it, apprenticeships and the challenges apprentices face. I also have friends who are guidance counsellors and others who are apprentices.

We already have an alternative to the leaving certificate, although it is not really recognised or known about, and that is the HETAC system. The junior certificate is equivalent to level 4 and the leaving certificate is equivalent to level 7. This system has been used successfully by students to not do the leaving certificate but instead to go into apprenticeships and attend third level universities. Therefore, there is an already existing system and I strongly recommend that the witnesses get their heads around that HETAC system. Seamus Hoyne would be well-placed to tell them about it.

George O'Callaghan is the chief executive officer of the Clare and Limerick Education and Training Board. The education and training boards are located all over Ireland and that is the model they use. I have used it to develop certification, for example, for a group of Traveller men who were illiterate but who could still write a module on copper work for which they were able to get certificates. It is a very good model of learning because it has specific learning outcomes as opposed to academic three-hour exams, which we see everybody is moving away from now.

The other thing to flag is that apprenticeships are not on the CAO. If we want to value apprenticeships, we need to start looking at how we do the apprenticeship programme, and I have raised this with the Minister, Deputy Harris. We have a lot of work to do to get people into apprenticeships and there are some challenges with the fact they start at different times of the year. As the witnesses rightly said, we value education in this country but, if it is not quite a judgment or snobbery, there is a bit of a thing about saying “Oh, my son is in college.” If people do an apprenticeship, they are in college because they study and they do practical stuff, which is the exact same as what people do in college. We have to look at the language we use around this. I believe strongly that apprenticeships should start in September-October at the same time that college starts, so that when people are leaving school after leaving certificate or fifth year, they all go off in September-October, whether it is to an apprenticeship, to third level or otherwise. There is a lot of work to be done around that.

The HETAC system is very good. We need to stop calling it the leaving certificate and call it HETAC level 6. People can do post-leaving certificate courses, PLCs. I have a friend who did not do a junior certificate or leaving certificate, and she did PLCs and is now doing an honours masters degree in University College Cork, despite never having sat an exam in secondary school. That is from 15 or 20 years ago. The model is there and we just need to bring it out of the dark.

With regard to the whole conversation we are having today, I have flagged and put it in as a suggestion for our work programme that we deal with the whole area around SMEs and the solutions and supports needed. For example, Padraig O’Reilly and Seamus Hoyne are doing great work in this area, in particular on the Speedier project and DigiEco. We got funding from the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, Deputy Varadkar, in the last budget, with €22 million for digitalising and decarbonising the SME sector. That is something we have to deal with as a committee and it is something I know Mr. Donohoe and Dr. Power will be involved in. The funding is there; we need to figure out the how as soon as possible.

That is why I put it on our work programme that we invite Mr. Padraic McElwee from the local enterprise offices. They have done considerable work through the green for micro initiative but they need help with giving mentors and employees the skill set and knowledge to encourage SMEs to decarbonise. We have secured funding from the Tánaiste, so there is nothing stopping us from doing this. I am flagging this matter with the witnesses. The expert group highlighted it in its report. We are ready to go. As a country, we could initiate it now.

I was speaking to Business in the Community Ireland. The witnesses referred to the need to link up with big businesses, even if only philanthropically. Businesses are raring to go. I plan to hold a session of this committee with Business in the Community Ireland, Mr. Seamus Hoyne, Mr. Joe Leddin, who advises businesses on grants and training to upskill employees, including digitalising and decarbonising the SME sector, and Mr. Padraic McElwee of the local enterprise offices as well as the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, on the circular economy. We have all the knowledge and funding we now need to help the SME sector. I hope we as a committee will work on this and follow up on the expert group's report. I have done a great deal of work in this regard. From speaking with Mr. Tomás Sercovich of Business in the Community Ireland, businesses are raring to go and big companies are happy to engage with smaller ones. They will do this partly for their own sake because they need to figure out the supply chain. Small companies are struggling to make their carbon evaluations and all the large companies want those evaluations because the latter's carbon footprints must take account of their suppliers'. This is why we need to help small businesses not just to decarbonise, but to know the value of what they have done and what their carbon footprint is. This is the only way forward. I quoted Mr. Larry Fink, the billionaire, to the Tánaiste when making my pre-budget submission to him and when speaking about decarbonisation. Climate investment is economic investment. There is no security in business otherwise. Businesses can forget about it if they are not decarbonising. That is the only way forward.

I thank the witnesses for their time and their important report.