Ms Tracey Donnery:

The premise of the European Year of Skills was to promote lifelong learning and encourage greater engagement. From our perspective, that was mainly with SMEs in digital and sustainability. What comes next for Skillnet Ireland is that we will remain a champion of lifelong learning and encourage it.

We will encourage lifelong learning among those entering the workforce and help everyone understand the need for it. Every one of us needs to continue to learn. We all need to develop new technical skills, whether it is digital skills, refreshing our leadership skills or broadening our understanding of our own sector or the wider world. We will make sure that we showcase some of the best examples because sometimes it is only when people see a wide range of examples in practice, given different sectors or sizes of companies, that we inspire them to want to learn.

Last year, the then Minister, now Taoiseach, Deputy Harris, called on everyone to develop some new skill, whether that is inside or outside the workplace. It is about promoting that and, in particular, inspiring and getting greater engagement from SMEs. What we have seen in both management development and upskilling is that once there is a commitment to lifelong learning within any company and people who will drive it, everyone benefits. The companies become more competitive and the career development becomes enriching for the person.

We are very pleased that one of our biggest opportunities in the European Year of Skills was launching our first European social fund scheme in January. I mentioned this earlier. It will give us a great opportunity to broaden the range of skills we offer, not only to offer upskilling to businesses to remain competitive, but also to empower individuals to develop their own career and move from one area to another. One of the biggest emphases on that is supporting people in the digital or sustainable skills space and also supporting returners and enabling people who wish to convert from sector A to sector B, or who wish to return to the workforce.

For me, it is about inspiring people and continuing to showcase the value of lifelong learning so that we can build greater engagement in it.