John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have been harping on about apprenticeships since 2014. We are almost at, or at, full employment. There is an issue. The organisations represented here can play a role in the schools in this regard. We are still hung up on university education and we have left apprenticeships behind. The UK is way ahead of us. It set up a commission several years ago and its ambition was that every family would consider apprenticeships for their children. Whether that was followed through on is another thing, but the idea is that the same consideration is given to apprenticeships as to college.

There are points of agreement between the three presenters about the targeting of measures. It is not something that IBEC would necessarily be commenting on, but the ESRI and IFAC share that perspective. Would the witnesses like to flesh out this aspect a little more? We went into a little more detail with the witnesses from the other two organisations on this point.