Mr. William Beausang:

We are not doing it at the granular level the Deputy is talking about but the OECD review was very much anchored in a comparison of what we do here compared to other European countries. Mr. Brownlee may speak to this later. In further education and training and across higher education, or in areas like community education, there is a huge provision of programmes. We would not see the supply side as being the obstacle to people engaging in lifelong learning. One example is the difficulty in getting appropriate information on the course, the type of programme, and the type of course that would suit, which leads to all of the work. One of the main themes of the OECD review is to put in place some online resource with a human-centric support that would guide people to aligning what they are looking for and the programmes they might be interested in doing with the programmes that are there. The programmes are there. The Deputy has asked a broad question about lifelong learning in society but when we talk about the workforce the system is hugely responsive to employers who engage with it to identify programmes that would be useful, helpful and relevant to their workforce. This would happen, for example, through the regional skills fora and following up on the work of groups such as the expert group on future skills needs. The short version of the response I give to the Deputy is it we do not really see it as a supply issue. It is more a co-ordination issue and an alignment issue that is holding us back in terms of lifelong learning overall.