Ms Úna Halligan:

In response to Senator Clune's comments about languages, the issue is not just the uptake of languages per se but the uptake of languages in context. Students going to college and learning all about the Greek, German or French classics is not the answer. The answer lies in amalgamating such knowledge with the skills one needs as a salesperson, for example. If one is trying to sell a BMW or agrifood products, for example, the contextual purpose of a language comes to the fore. In our discussions with various companies and particularly indigenous companies working with Enterprise Ireland in developing export markets, we discovered that often they could find very good salespeople who could not speak the required language or else they could find people who were very good linguistically but did not have the other competencies required. This is an issue for the universities and institutes of technology. A language and business studies course that is taught by a German businessperson would improve the context for students, for example. There are enormous opportunities in that area.

Another issue we glossed over was that of sales techniques. As Senator White may know, selling is not marketing. We have found that many young people think a salesman sells cars and suchlike and they do not see sales as a potential career. There is a big difference between public relations and marketing and actual sales techniques. In that context, we have asked the third-level institutions to introduce a sales module to some of their business programmes.