Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I hear a real appetite among employers to provide it as in-work training. It is about employee retention and if an employee is not feeling valued in whatever way in his or her current employment, there are currently loads of opportunities within the labour market and people are mobile. People are moving. It is a balance of frustration on behalf of employers because they are paying into the NTF and on the other hand, a willingness to actually engage in this in terms of in-work training saying, "You have your two hours or three hours a week to engage in these modules because we know you want to progress within the organisation." It is the place we can probably make the most progress over the shortest time. It is difficult to improve on excellence and there are a lot of parameters where we are performing excellently education. It is not so difficult to improve on mediocre, which is kind of where we are sitting in respect of lifelong learning.