Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 3 November 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Increasing Employment through Training: Innopharma Labs

1:30 pm

Photo of Peadar TóibínPeadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Dr. Jones on the great work in which he is involved. In November 2011, Fasttrack to Information Technology, FIT, came before the committee. This organisation involves information technology companies which work together to ensure the skills gaps in the sector are met in some fashion. It always strikes me as bizarre that although this country is still in an unemployment crisis we have a skills crisis in certain sectors, which is an international skills crisis as such. According to analysis, what are the skills gaps? Are there figures on the pharmaceutical and medical technology sectors in the State which show they are shy 5,000 or 2,000 staff? What is the analysis of the number shortages at skill levels from technician to doctorate level?