Ms Br?d Horan:

The integration of apprenticeships into the CAO model was mentioned earlier and that is to be welcomed. I also mentioned career guidance, which is an important area we need to focus on. Culturally, we have undervalued other areas of work beyond professional qualifications. There are huge opportunities for collaboration between the TUs and the traditional university sector – if I could describe DCU as part of the traditional university sector even though we are only 40 years old. The Cassells group would have encouraged this and in other work I did with the HEA we sought to encourage inter-institutional collaboration between the institutions at third level and those in further education. We have to be much more collaborative. The work we do with Enterprise Ireland, which Ms Duggan and Mr. Horgan mentioned, is important for apprenticeships and for all our programmes. We are working actively with Enterprise Ireland on DCU Futures, which is one of those human capital initiatives to look at the skills that are being developed and the education which Professor Rogers referred to. We are educating people for a future, not just for a set of skills. We are good at that collaboration in Ireland but we need to get better at it.