Ms Br?d Horan:

If I may, I would like to come back to the Chairman's comment on females in apprenticeship because he touched on something very important. Gender stereotyping goes beyond apprenticeship. My career in the ESB demonstrated to me that it is a real issue in the context of craft apprenticeships and I know how difficult it is to overcome that. The 30% Club and DCU worked together over the last few years to build an internship for trainee teachers. This may sound counter-intuitive but they set up paid internships over the summer to enable trainee teachers to go into industry where they could experience all aspects of working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, careers. That was done because we feel that teachers and career guidance need to adjust to modern society and the modern career options. It is not just about technology but about the broader areas and about gender stereotyping.

An issue that is very relevant to this committee's work is the human capital initiative. This is competitive funding made available through the National Training Fund. It is a really good initiative but the areas of education and nursing were excluded from it. I do not see why that should be the case because initiatives related to how we are training our teachers can have a really long-term impact on all of these issues and people working in the non-traditional areas would accept that.

In relation to refugees, I cannot comment in depth on the issues but I know that DCU has already mobilised a virtual working group to look at the issues for the institution and for the refugees and how we can moderate that. We have been an initiator of the concept of the university of sanctuary and as Ms Duggan has said, this is really important for all refugees. Obviously we are acutely conscious of it at the moment and there will be a challenge for all institutions in this space but we proactively are engaging on it. Again, this speaks to the agility and adaptability of the higher education sector. Without waiting to be asked, the institutions are looking at what they can do and how they can make sure that they cope as well as possible and cater for the new arrivals as well as possible.

That whole question of gender stereotyping is fundamental because 50% of the talent is female and we need to use that across all sectors. I am passionate about that and I believe that higher education can play a really important role in that respect.