Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I fully agree with the Senator. The cut-off age of 64 in the EUROSTAT data is its view of the world and not ours. I met a very accomplished former public official the other day. This was somebody who had been involved in public life who had recently retired. I spoke to this person about how it was going and they said, "I am able to learn again." It is true. We all do our jobs. People go to work and do their jobs to the best of their ability but when they retire, they all of a sudden find there are opportunities to learn a language or skill. One of the things we will do as part of European Year of Skills, which I had better plug, is to launch a campaign in September to encourage everybody to learn a new skill, by picking one skill they want to learn this year - the Chair can tell me what his is later - and make a conscious effort to learn it.

I will make a final point in response to the Senator's question on PhDs. We need to have more than one model and more than one way to do a PhD. People talk about apprenticeships a lot. How many people know that in Ireland, they can do a PhD as an apprentice? There is a level 10 PhD apprenticeship in Ireland. That is one of the different routes. We need to look at work-based PhDs, as well as that traditional academic model, if we want to really embed and diversify the PhD population.