Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I thank the Chair and thank those on the panel for their presentations.

I am taken by the idea that we need to drive STEM all the way back to primary school, which is where I started out. Everybody started out in primary school but I started my working life in primary schools. I am not sure that we are equipping our primary school teachers to the point where they are confident to deliver STEM. It was one of my favourite subjects to teach but I maybe had a background in it that others did not have. It is a matter of building that confidence. I refer to the idea that people go into science in secondary, or on into later science in the senior cycle, and there is already a mental block against it. Science is seen as hard to do. It is not necessarily hard to do. It is incredibly interesting and there are all sorts of careers that flow from it.

I wanted to talk about what I see as a positive blurring between the end of third level, fourth level and access into industry. We have a good example of that in Waterford and a strong history of it in the former Waterford Institute of Technology, WIT, and what is now South East Technological University, SETU. In fact, even geographically, the IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland offices physically overlook the campus. I wanted to ask the panel about that idea of a blended space in between them. In Waterford, we have Kinetic Labs, which is right within the IDA Ireland enterprise centre but has really strong research links back into the college or, as it is now, university. We have the history and culture of the college, now the university, spinning off into the likes of FeedHenry and the Walton Institute. I wanted to ask, predominantly Dr. Soden and Ms McMahon of IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland, respectively, do they see a positive move in that direction that would blur the boundaries of our universities and technological universities so that they are more joined-in and linked-in to industry from the get-go, I suppose, even before people have completed their college career?