Mr. Ned Costello:

In answer to Deputy Calleary's question, I said in my opening statement that we were anxious to ensure complementarity and, therefore, I did not got into specific initiative type examples, but that is not because they do not exist. In the submission, we mentioned, for example, the DCU enterprise computing initiative, which addresses a specific skills need in a particular computing area. Those examples are found in institutions generally, including computer summer schools for secondary school pupils. There is also strong participation in the CoderDojo movement. It is not a purely IT event and the first Galway event was held recently with a huge attendance. We are fully involved in the ICT action plan in the same way as the institutes of technology.

However, it is important we have diversity in the higher education system. A central plank of the higher education strategy is that all institutions should not look like all other institutions and there is an orientation within the university system towards level 9 and level 10 complementing undergraduate education. That is of huge importance to the technology sector and the future of the country because, in recent years, a significant proportion of IDA foreign direct investment, FDI, projects have been in the research area, not just in technology industries that have a research component but in pure research and development projects. We are active across all the major sectors. The SFI CSET programme and the Tyndall Institute in UCC are critical components in embedding and expanding those industries in Ireland.

We attempted to show in the submission that much of what goes on in the technology sector is churn and change and that happens constantly. At an individual institutional level, there is huge day-to-day contact between companies and people at the coalface who design and deliver programmes. Much of that happens through the research and commercialisation interface. That is one of the major areas. It is not only down to FDI because we have the EI technology centres as well, where groups of companies come together to define a technology need with ITs and universities and address it. There is a rich web of interactions. The people who come to our university-industry round table are chief executive officers and other senior figures within the industrial sector. They are not the representatives of the industry representatives associations. They talk to us directly about their priority needs.

I will not comment on the policy regarding the guidance issue because it is a policy decision taken by the Department in the context of resources. It is clear that the strongest driver of educational provision is the labour market. As Mr. Boland said, our education system is good at equilibrating supply and demand and when the labour market wants something, students and their parents, who are the main guidance counsellors, vote with their feet and there is a change in behaviour. That is occurring now in the technology sector, but there will be always be an element of friction in the system. There is an effect where a demand emerges and, for example, there is a quick increase in employment in the ICT sector but there is inevitably an element of frictional lag before the system catches up. Sometimes that works the other way and there is an overshoot, as happened during the dotcom bust when significant provision was laid on in response to a major acceleration in demand before the labour market opportunities dried up and we were left with many people on courses for whom there were no jobs. One can never get this mathematically right but the rebalancing of construction skills with ICT skills is happening across the system as a whole and, therefore, provision responds flexibly and dynamically, but there will be narrow instances of specific skills needs and we have to hone in on them and find ways to address them.