Ms Meadhbh Costello:

Across the board, businesses increasingly recognise the growing importance of having diverse workplaces. In the context of a tight labour market, where we have more than 2.5 million people in employment and an unemployment rate of around 4.3%, employers are increasingly looking to diversify the workforce they have in place. This is an opportunity to look at alternative sources of challenge that are under-represented in the workplace, including women, members of the Traveller community, etc. We have seen that employers are increasingly engaging in a number of different programmes and initiatives to make their workplaces far more inclusive, including by looking at things such as how they attract and recruit workers. They are considering the systems they put in place to ensure their recruitment processes are more balanced and making posts more attractive to people have not put their names forward for positions in the past. Self-selection may be a result of people going for certain positions. Employers are also considering mentorship, career opportunities, training and investment. There is an opportunity with the National Training Fund to address some of the challenges around skills participation for under-represented groups because we know that in respect of, for example, digital skills, it is not only important to have ICT graduates at the highest level. That is critical for many businesses in our economy but it will be important for us to invest in the whole scale and gamut of digital skills.