Ms Moira Leydon:

The whole area of guidance needs to be revisited. I am particularly impressed by the manner in which the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science has moved by bringing the further education programmes into the CAO system and significantly expanding the range of programmes there. Ms O’Reilly is quite correct when she says that we do not need to be instilling in all of our school leavers the idea that they have to go on to a degree programme in order to be able to learn something more about an area they are interested in. We need the FE space which, in the past two years, has become dramatically inclusive. In the local area where I live in County Meath, some of the programmes are amazing with regard to the changes that are taking place. I reiterate Mr. Duffy’s point that unless we have adequate guidance counselling services in schools, and we are upskilling the people in those roles, we are not going to reap the potential of this system change at further education. I will leave it with that simple message.