Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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The question of upskilling certainly comes partially under the ESF, which is used to promote the attainment of sustainable and quality employment through relevant upskilling measures and to support labour mobility, etc. I have read out the list. I believe that if we are looking at the progression and professional development of the workforce and the labour force, adult literacy has to be an important component of that. When 3,000 workers in my own county lost their jobs as a result of the closure of Fruit of the Loom, and when Unifi in Letterkenny closed a few years after that, we faced the massive challenge of getting the local workforce reskilled and reinvented. Adult literacy was a big part of our approach to personal development. Our adult education sector took a hand-in-glove approach to that. In this specific example, people in a particular sector were able to retrain and regroup. There was an emphasis on adult literacy as part of that regrouping and redirection.