Mr. Ray English:

Ireland, through the Department of Education, joined WorldSkills International in 1956 and competed for the first time in 1957. We have competed in every competition since then, winning 65 gold medals, 53 silver medals, 81 bronze medals and 174 diplomas or medallions of excellence. With us in the room today we have a gold medal winner and also a medallion of excellence award winner from the previous competition in 2019 in Kazan. That really is a significant award level and it really goes to show that Ireland can compete on the international scale across a range of skills.

WorldSkills gives youths the chance to compete, experience and learn how to become the best in their skill of choice in what is known as the Olympics of Skills. From the traditional trades to multi-skilled technological careers supported by partners, industry, Government, volunteers and educational and training institutions, WorldSkills Ireland is making a direct impact on raising the level of skills nationally, ensuring equity of career perception and promoting skills careers nationally and throughout the world with the 89 member countries in WorldSkills International.

To outline some of the activities in which we are engaged, WorldSkills is tasked by the Department, which remains a member of WorldSkills, with organising a national competitive event. In 2019, for the first time, we brought all of these skill competitions together into the RDS arena. Senator Malcolm Byrne was certainly there at the start of it, which we remember well. We would have liked to have proceeded in 2020 and 2021 but, obviously, Covid-19 got in the way. In that first event, 12,500 students came through the door to witness 25 skill competitions over three days and also experience the exhibitors and training zone, recruitment zone and education and skills zone. Undoubtedly, it was a really successful event.

We are lucky that we are able to organise WorldSkills Ireland live 2022, again, in the RDS Simmonscourt arena from 13 September to 15 September, which will be Ireland's largest ever apprenticeship and skills event. We will have more than 25 competitions over three days, increasing the range of opportunities and the visual impact that young students can have. Members will obviously know competitions from the traditional skills and particularly apt, as Ireland is seeking to recruit into the construction industry zone, we have brick and stone laying, plastering, painting and decorating, plumbing and refrigeration skills. Additionally, on the side of that, we have also grown the competitions into areas such as ICT and cloud computing, in which Ireland was the first country in WorldSkills to run a competition, and building information modelling, which is now called digital construction. Again, Ireland led the way with WorldSkills in running the first competitions in that and they are both now WorldSkills International competitions.

Again for the first time, we are introducing a new competition we are calling digital infrastructure for sustainability, which looks at pre-building, that is, the groundworks, mapping and setting out of areas.

Again, it is about that move into digital and green spaces.

We believe we are being innovative in our approach. World Skills Ireland has always crossed the range of Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, skill levels. We have competitions from level 5 through to levels 6, 7 and 8. We cover further education, apprenticeships, traineeships and higher education. The committee will have seen the CAO offering but we have been ahead of that and have been doing that for a number of years. It is great that our offering will match what the State is looking for. When people come into the RDS in September they will see all those offerings and activities clearly displayed. They can try it, see it, believe it and become what they want to be. We have talked about "see it and be it" but for the first time ever we are actually presenting that to students. We are delighted that it is looking like there will be an increase in footfall compared to previous years. The morning sessions are completely sold out. The 12,000 sq. m RDS event space is now full and we cannot accommodate any more competitions. As the committee knows, the number of apprenticeships in Ireland has now grown from 27 when we started out to 67, plus 13 that are in development and a number of others that are being considered. If we are to increase our range of skill offerings and experiences in order to be that single event that will supply everybody, which we want to do, we also need to grow some of our funding.

There is also the international aspect. It is important that we have a pipeline of activities. World Skills Shanghai is due to happen in October 2022. In line with the Osnabrück declaration by the Department of Education, we are becoming members of EuroSkills, which will be held in Pozna in Poland in 2023. We will also be holding the general assembly of World Skills, bringing the 91 member countries to Dublin in September 2023. The story Ireland will be able to tell those other 90 countries involved is incredible and the opportunity to share our experience of how we have changed perceptions around skills and grown apprenticeships is important.