Mr. Tony Donohoe:

I will take the Senator's three questions. As we have said before, we all agree about developing an appetite for lifelong learning. There is also the matter of providing opportunities. There are some interesting projects happening in the human capital initiative, including a project relating to microcredentials, which provides learning in bite-sized chunks. For many full-time workers, it is impossible to allocate time to get a master's or bachelor's degree. Turning that into chunks and having an education system, including universities, technological universities and institutes of technology, that presents information in a modular way is positive.

The second question was about apprenticeships. These will work if we give people real progression opportunities. There has been significant discussion about apprenticeships since we had the reform in 2012. There is evidence on the ground relating to taking up new apprenticeships. The traditional 27 craft apprenticeships will go with the ebb and flow of the construction sector. Demand is high at the moment. There have been 6,700 so far this year, which is higher than last year and is encouraging. I am particularly interested in the other apprenticeships, which go up to PhD level. The University of Limerick provides a PhD for principal engineers. That is needed. It is about young people's aspirations and breaking the stranglehold of the points system and the leaving certificate on young people's aspirations. That can be done by providing them with opportunities to progress. Those are the critical elements of the apprenticeship model.

On the matter of languages, I have been involved in education policy for a long time. I find languages the most problematic of the lot, with regard to how they are actually addressed. It is a disadvantage of being an English-speaking country. I do not think the teaching and learning of Irish has done any favours, which is due to the way that Irish is taught rather than the fact that it should be taught.

It might have dissuaded some people from taking up languages. Basically, we need to give young people opportunities to use languages, be it in sport or wherever else and in different contexts. Believe me, language skills are critical in this post-Brexit world. Those in the Irish indigenous sector, in particular, will have to diversify their markets. There is an old saying that you buy in your own language but you sell in your customer's language. If one wants to be successful in export markets one needs to have staff who have a facility with languages.