John Lyons (Dublin North West, Labour)
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with regard to the associate professional issue, I have been working with FIT and the Minister for Social Protection to push the concept of the associate professional because we see the value of what FIT is proposing. There is more than one way to achieve the skillset that is needed, in particular in the IT sector but not only that, the model FIT has proposed would be transferable to other sectors in a new age apprenticeship type model for the pharmaceutical sector and wherever else we want to apply it. Is it correct to say that we still have too many people going through the university route for the IT sector when some of the jobs could be done by an associate professional which allows for a better fusion between on-site experience for the people working in the environment rather than the fusion with the higher education model?