Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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Someone might have a maths or computer science background and go into the tech sector or coding. When we had the crisis in banking, for example, or when banks closed in regional areas because of consumer behaviour and so on, people from banking moved into other areas, such as caring, or came back into teaching. I am curious about bringing people in their 40s and 50s back into a teaching role. How can that be encouraged Ireland does not do well in lifelong learning. We rank very lowly on that. We are missing a huge cohort. We are great at getting people from primary school through secondary school and into third level. Hopefully, with the apprenticeship programme, we are giving people a few opportunities to get a qualification. How do we then encourage or entice people who have had ten or 15 years of a career to change into something else? I pose the question to Mr. Reynolds and then Dr. Freeman.