Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
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I thank the witnesses. I will focus on the equality aspect. The reason there had been a gender focus on STEM was because of those working in industries based on STEM subjects. However, as Professor Looney quite rightly said, we are in a different phase now. We are somewhat through a digital revolution and we are into a green revolution. That means that every single human must have that underpinning and understanding. I have long been concerned by the intergenerational inequalities where older people are not able to deal with their finances because it is moving online and so on. Much of that relates to not having had the knowledge base. In the next room, I have been discussing the sustainable development goals, SDGs. Education is SDG 4. While Ireland does well in education at primary and second-level and even in tertiary education, it is life-long learning where we are not up to scratch on an international level. I am interested to hear what we can do. Will the kind of investment that has been put in over the last couple years get us to where we need to be?

We need a focus on teaching. It is teaching for everyday life, rather than for further careers at a high-level engineering or technology environment that is probably missing here. That is where girls and women miss out. A witness pointed out to me earlier that we expect teachers to have a certain level when it comes to Irish but not necessarily when it comes to maths or science. It is no wonder that we are putting teachers into a position where they do not necessarily have the education backup to be proficient in science. Children come into secondary school understanding what some subjects mean and so they choose the subjects that they understand but they do not choose the ones which they have no understanding of or basis in up to the age of 12, in technology, science and so on. The part of about teaching is where I would like to focus. Everyone here has emphasised that and for our purposes today, that is what we need to focus on.