Mr. Michael Hourihan:

Basically, at this point in time we have two main activities. The first is the World Skills Ireland activities, which is ultimately the RDS event. Then there are the WorldSkills competitions that are run every second year.

The national funding comes from the HEA and industry. The HEA stipulates that whatever funding is provided through it, matching funding must come from industry, which at present is quite difficult, as one can appreciate. With the situation resulting from Covid-19, businesses are not throwing around sponsorship as easily as was the case in previous years. That is the model nationally.

For the WorldSkills competitions, which as I say happen every second year, we have WorldSkills activities throughout and both Mr. English myself would be heavily involved in those. Some of the funding for that comes from the HEA and some of it come from other State organisations, our own organisation, MTU, TUD and from other areas. Funding is always an issue, as I am sure the Chairman is fed up of hearing inside here.

Realistically, as Mr. English pointed out earlier, we are trying to expand our footprint. We have RDS Simmonscourt full at this point in time for next September and we would love to be able to add more skills.

There are two problems. The first is the area available in the RDS, where there are many other halls, and the second is the funding. It is as simple as that. This is where the whole thing is quite difficult. This past week we have had discussions on the cost of banners for our event in the RDS. We are speaking about relatively small money. This is the level we are at.