Ms Patricia King:

When IDA Ireland or Enterprise Ireland are trying to achieve investment for particular areas, a key element in an area's attractiveness is the skills base that it offers. To me, there is an opportunity for the new Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to have joined-up thinking about this. We could even specify areas for innovation and home in on that. If we had an offering from institutes and universities to develop particular skills for an area, that area would then become attractive for investment for companies going into that area because they would want to utilise that skills base. Those conversations are happening but they are probably not happening in a joined-up way. We need to be much more flexible about how we are having those conversations so as to develop areas based on their attractiveness with regard to skill.

We are now entering a reform of our economy. In ten years, we will have much-reformed economy compared with the one that we have now. Reasons for that include Brexit, Covid and the normal reform process that takes over. As the Deputy knows from his own experience, our education base is much risen compared with what it was even two decades ago, but we now have to be much more targeted in producing the skills base to attract industry to a particular area. People will see reason behind that and take part in that, and the institutes, universities and so on will respond to that. We can have those conversations in a social dialogue and get a quick product from that, but if nobody talks about it in a joined-up way, then everybody will have good ideas but there will be no action at the end.