Dee Ryan (Fianna Fail)

I thank the witnesses very much for joining us and for their presentations and opening statements. I have some questions that may seem elementary, but I am trying to get my head around the ecosystem and trying to understand all of the different stakeholders who have to feed into achieving the common goal we all have of driving up the number of apprenticeships and their adoption, from both a student and an employer perspective.

I might start with QQI. I am trying to understand what the validation process looks like for QQI by comparison to the validation of an equivalent level of QQI qualification in a full-time course or even in comparison with micro-credentials, which, I understand, are pretty easy for the technological universities and the traditional universities to roll out. What does the qualification process look like in comparison with the very new ones QQI is developing, and where does it start? Who comes forward with it?