Ms Meadhbh Costello:

Yes. There are exciting opportunities to embed aspects of the apprenticeship system or further education and training, FUT, offerings into the second level education. On apprenticeships, there are clear opportunities to introduce apprenticeship programmes. That would help to achieve the overall ambition set out in the national apprenticeship action plan of increasing the number of apprenticeships to 10,000 per year.

The introduction of employer-led apprenticeships in key industry areas, such as cybersecurity, finance and accounting, has really transformed the apprenticeship offering in Ireland. However, we really need to boost the perception of apprenticeships for key stakeholders, including parents, guidance counsellors and students themselves, to create a narrative around apprenticeships that actually shows their true offering. We need to highlight that the apprenticeship is an alternative model of learning that crosses the boundary from further to higher education. There are opportunities to earn while you learn, develop a lifelong career and earn qualifications up to level 10.

One example of a potential opportunity is the P-TECH pilot, which has been rolled out in Dublin's North East Inner City, with a number of schools involved there. It provides an example of this type of public-private partnership that is supported by industry and education institutions to increase the number of students who are engaged in this type of learning and to help them achieve a qualification on the QQI framework, as well as a school qualification. We need to assess the progress that the pilot has made and explore what type of opportunities there are to expand it into other areas.

On the issue of modern languages, I think it was mentioned earlier that from a business perspective, it is critical that we increase the number of people who are engaging in modern languages, as well as diversifying the languages that they are engaging in. In recent years, we have seen a growing demand for language skills. However, we do not have the skills available in Ireland to meet these needs. Indeed, prior to Covid, there was actually an increasing number of vacancies associated with those language skills. Ireland's language strategy sets out the objective of diversifying and increasing the uptake of languages learned, as well as cultivating the languages that exist in our community. We have people of more than 200 different nationalities in Ireland. We need to look at the impact of issues such as Brexit and globalisation, which are actually driving the demand for the learning of different languages. We must look at the challenges around the dominance of English in the global area, the lack of awareness around opportunities that foreign languages can bring to the individual and the perceived difficulty around learning languages, as well as the shortage of teachers who are qualified to teach modern languages.