Ms Meadhbh Costello:

I will definitely have to start using the term "matrix of education" going forward. On the question of how employers can make it easier for apprentices to come into apprenticeships, looking at the employer survey and the apprentice survey, there is a cohort of both that said they found difficulty finding an apprentice or an apprentice finding an employer. Clearly, there is some sort of mismatch going on. It would be very positive to have a more advanced job matching platform available through the national apprenticeship office. It is currently a static page where there are lists of employers that are available. Something a little bit more sophisticated, which allows for better matching of employment opportunities with individuals would be positive. Individual employers are involved with advertising their own programmes the whole time.

Through the pre-apprenticeship programme operated out of TU Dublin there were excellent job matching days and opportunities for individuals to go in and test what it would be like to work in a workplace. A lot of it is quite organic and organised by individual employers and we are trying to share best practice as much as possible, though there is maybe an element of the matching that we would like to see more organised.

On the National Training Fund and the employer voice, we would really like to see employers have a stronger say in how that fund is directed. Part of that requires more up-to-date and regular reporting on how the funding is spent and what impact it is having on lifelong learning so we can make those types of decisions. At the moment we have a deficit of knowledge about how the NTF is invested and what impact it has on things like lifelong learning. The first port of call needs to be much more regular information and data on how people are engaging in programmes operated by the fund. We have a National Skills Council and a subgroup of it is looking at the fund. It would be really useful for them to have more of a strategic and structured role within the broader dialogue of the National Training Fund so they could input directly on how that funding should be spent. There are two very purposeful answers that could help employers have a much stronger voice.