Mr. Tony Donohoe:

Regarding the importance of soft skills, the term "soft skills" is probably the wrong one to use because they are hard skills to acquire and to embed in training programmes in a tangible way. There is much rhetoric around them but defining them and making them a reality is more of a challenge. As the Senator suggests, this goes back to the education system. All education and training are part of a continuum. The competences that employers are looking for are developed in the education system. As the Senator said, the Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science was looking at leaving certificate reform last week. We provided evidence at it. We think that an over-reliance on a terminal examination, which is the leaving certificate, does not give the space or motivation to develop these soft skills, including creativity, analytical thinking, empathy, communication, teamwork and so on. The most important one of all is learning to learn and developing an appetite for learning. If a school experience is dictated by a high-stakes terminal examination, it is more likely to extinguish that appetite for learning.

Why do employers and businesses more generally look for this? We are in a world of ongoing upskilling. This, and reskilling, will be a fact of life in the workplace. That appetite and spirit of inquiry is developed at a leaving certificate level. We do have surveys. The most recent was published in 2019 by the Higher Education Authority and SOLAS. It was about employers' views of graduates, which are favourable, by and large. Some 84% of employers were either satisfied or very satisfied with graduate quality, however quality can be defined in the context of education and training. That survey highlighted the potential absence that the Senator alludes to with regard to employability and softer skills. Employers also pointed out that 20% had occupations or roles coming up in the next five years that they were not confident that they could fill, which would require much reskilling within their workforces.