Dr. Vivienne Patterson:

It is not always completely obvious within the higher education sector, where a great deal of work is done with employers to ensure the right skills, modules and types of courses are being provided. That goes on regularly. Mainstream undergraduate degree courses are changing constantly. One always has employers on the accreditation boards, and so on. That goes on but in recent times, the Human Capital Initiative is investing over €200 million in 24 projects.

The main aim of those projects is to work directly with enterprise to ensure that what is being developed within the higher education sector is relevant to the needs of employers. There are various projects that work with employers in different ways. Some of them work with employers to develop courses in which students use virtual or augmented reality to situate themselves within a company and use equipment through virtual reality that they will use when they go out into the workplace. Some of the employers are designing the courses. Some employers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, go into higher education institutions and work with students to solve problems.

The idea is that as things emerge and change, and things are changing very quickly, we will be able to respond because we are having those conversations with enterprise. That is working really well, particularly in these projects, the subjects of which range from cyber skills to climate to centres for climate action. We have developed a number of the offshore energy courses that are being offered this year under pillar 1 of the human capital initiative. That is in direct response to a request from enterprise to have people in those particular areas. I do not know whether I could pick out any one area in which we are excelling. We are keeping up to date and we are agile and responsive across all our discipline areas.