Ms Megan Yeates:

I would like to thank the committee for inviting us in. This is an amazing opportunity to speak on behalf of the team. I know everybody will want to give their input.

I also thank the team we have behind us. As was said, a great team supports us and brings us along. To give a little background, I won gold in the freight forwarding category at WorldSkills. It was the very first year in which freight forwarding made it to the WorldSkills. Two years ago it was a future skill that was being tested. It was an amazing opportunity to be able to take part in it the first year going.

WorldSkills is an absolutely amazing opportunity to get to represent one's country at an international level. There are not enough words to say how great this year's event was. What one takes away from it is the training opportunity we had leading up to it. I had ten weeks of intensive training from June to August, which was supported by TU Dublin. As Mr. English mentioned, I had my chief expert, who worked with me on a volunteer basis, and I was training five days a week, Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. It is intense and a lot goes into it. When we travel over there we are up against the best in the world so we have to give it our all and be as informed as possible. We go over there almost wanting to know more than our experts. My expert is quite a few years ahead of me, but the support we get from the institutes is amazing. I know that some of my colleagues here had the opportunity to train with different institutes across the country. I was very lucky that I got to go out into my industry. My background is that I completed my logistics and supply chain management level 8 undergraduate programme in TU Dublin, so a lot of the companies that support the college through the work placements were very welcoming and opened their doors to me throughout the summer, took me on and gave me training. Not a single person in industry who was approached refused to get involved. It is very refreshing to see that and that all the companies out there are very supportive of the younger generation coming up and want to give that support to nurture our skills and help to educate us to make us the leaders and the industry experts into the future.

I would now like to pass the floor to one of my colleagues, who would like to continue the discussion.