Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

We have a job of work, not just in terms of increasing the attractiveness of further education and apprenticeships to Northern Ireland students, but also to our own students. It is a very complex system. Nobody in Northern Ireland, for example, would understand what a PLC is, a traineeship is or what specific skills training is. However, they are courses that can take a person into interesting careers and occupations. There are also courses that have currency in higher education, where higher education institutions would recognise the qualifications a person gets. A bit of it is awareness raising and a bit of it is trying to simplify those courses and say, for example, this course in mechanical engineering will take you into year two of a degree in Atlantic Technical University, ATU, or whatever, whereas another course will take you directly into employment with the manufacturing sector. We need to simplify it. Again, that is not unique for trying to attract Northern Ireland students; we need to focus on that more widely.

There is a big opportunity for further education and training and apprenticeship around that centre of excellence idea. I mentioned that the Louth and Meath ETB developed a consortium around advanced manufacturing that works both North and South. Cavan-Monaghan have good links as well and they are involved in engineering. They have a great employer, namely, Combilift, that attracts workers North and South and it is a good apprenticeship programme. In Donegal, there is one at Pramerica around software engineering. We have specialisms that we could use to drive that cross-Border activity and serve as a resource for the whole of the island. That is the niche that further education and training needs to focus on. If people can see the pathway into interesting careers and interesting industries, that is what will make them come.