Dr. Alex Dowdall:

Of course. The focus on core undergraduate and postgraduate provision in higher education is absolutely essential. That is where a lot of the Department’s established initiatives around the Irish language have been focused on up till now. We have mentioned the block grant and the special provision for the Irish language. Some of the other initiatives that we have mentioned so far, such as the gníomhaí Gaeilge initiative, are focused less on the teaching of Irish and more on the promotion and use of Irish as a living language on campuses. That is also an important aspect because we need to remember that there will be people coming into higher education with a good level of Irish but may not necessarily choose to study Irish. We want to encourage them to remain proficient in the language so that they can then go on to use it in their professional careers later.

When we talk about expanding undergraduate and postgraduate provision, we need to remember that the higher education sector is kind of like a super tanker and changing it takes time. New degree cohorts coming on this year will not be graduating for three or four years. If we have 2030 targets, we need to think about flexible provision.

It is important to look at some of the initiatives and examples of good practice which are happening. These are focused on microcredentials and flexible provision and so forth, some of which are delivered through the higher education sector, while others are delivered through further education and in-work training by the likes of Skillnet Ireland. We briefly mentioned microcredentials in our introduction. This has been an important policy focus for the Department in recent years. While we perform very well in European terms when it comes to the production of university graduates, the OECD has called us out on needing to work to improve lifelong learning, upskilling and reskilling. A number of initiatives have been funded by our Department in recent years to support that. The human capital initiative, HCI, is one example. One stream of the human capital initiative funded an Irish Universities Association, IUA, project to develop a website, microcreds.ie, which provides individuals with short, targeted learning offerings in areas of critical skills needs. These offerings will range between one and 30 points on the European credit transfer and accumulation system, ECTS, and usually take approximately one semester to complete.

A total of 17 of those microcredentials are offered in Irish. Many of them are about the Irish language, but not all. Some are focused on business management, human resource management and so on. There are also a number of Irish courses specifically designed for professional purposes. In addition, this year in the further education and training sector, Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim Education and Training Board collaborated with Gaelchultúr to establish a new course in Irish for professional purposes at levels 3, 4, 5 and 6, which is free to access as a further education and training course. It is designed to support those who are looking to improve their use of Irish in the workplace. It is important that it is subject agnostic and that people do not have to be trained in a particular skills area to do that course. It is open to people in different sectors of the economy to look at those sorts of initiatives.

There are also good examples of good practice coming through Skillnet Ireland, which is the business development agency of our Department. It funds more than 70 individual skillnets, which are cosponsored by industry. For instance, the Gréasán na Meán Skillnet is focused on the media sector and collaborates with TG4 on a number of specific Irish-language journalism-related courses.

Another recent example is the Green Tech Skillnet, which is the renewable energy skillnet sponsored by Wind Energy Ireland. Like many, it recognises the development potential for renewable energy off the west coast of Ireland. Last year, it organised a new course, in collaboration with Gaelchultúr, on wind energy as Gaeilge. This is designed for community liaison officers or people working in the wind industry who may be engaging with communities in Gaeltacht areas in the context of those anticipated renewable energy projects. That is an example of an industry identifying a critical skills need around the Irish language and using the existing mechanisms in place in order to address that need. While these are just examples of current good practice, the system exists and the opportunity is there to scale them.

To go back to something we may have mentioned at the beginning, a lot of this is demand led. We rely on particular sectors and industries of the economy to come to us to identify where those needs are. Our agencies are then in place and they have the mechanisms capable of addressing those needs, to a certain extent.