Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am confident that the recently launched five-year further education and training, FET, strategy, Ireland's first ever further education and training strategy, will provide the right balance between provision that has a primary focus on developing skills for the economy and courses that support core skills and personal development and are aimed at increasing equity, social inclusion and educational progression. There is a need to strike that balance. Of course, these latter programmes also assist learners on their journey to employment, and we should never try somehow to separate those two objectives. Of the programmes with an economic focus, investment priorities will be determined by good quality labour market intelligence that identifies sectors with skills requirements over time.

The strategy contains strategic goals, both on providing skills for the economy and on such active inclusion. All programmes, regardless of their focus, will be reviewed over the lifetime of the strategy. However, the strategy recommends, subject to overall budgetary constraints, sustaining the levels of funding relating to literacy and numeracy and adult education in the immediate term. That is the most immediate challenge that we face.

Therefore, I am not concerned that the FET strategy will neglect non-tech or non-business related further education in the future.

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