Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will try not to take the full time, given that other members wish to contribute.

I agree 100% with Senator Garvey's comments on HETAC. I used to work for HETAC, which no longer exists. It was subsumed into Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, but the work continues. A large amount can and should be done around the national qualifications framework and the European qualifications framework. A framework gives us a route, but not necessarily to putting a label on something, in that it does not have to be a leaving certificate, junior certificate or even an intermediate certificate, as I would have done. It can just be a level 1 to level 6 qualification or whatever. We are not making as much as we should be of the fact we have that framework. When HETAC was subsumed into QQI ten or more years ago, the intention was to streamline educational qualifications, but we still use the outdated system. We still have a single big exam for the majority of people. There needs to be a shift in mindsets in this regard.

On the recognition of prior qualifications, we are missing a trick. There are people who are doing work that could be subject to a proper streamlined evaluation process. I am not necessarily speaking about people with a single large qualification but about people with a series of smaller qualifications that could be added together. QQI used to do this to a large extent but I am unsure as to how much it is happening at the moment. Do we have a pool of skills we are not recognising? Generally, an increase in wages comes with the recognition of skills, but the value is coming from the worker attaining those skills. Do we have an unevaluated set of skills we could tap into?