Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The difficulty, not just with the educational agenda, but also with the skills agenda, is that each country appears to be pulling down the shutters. Consider Brexit and Trump. Everyone is looking after himself or herself and we are falling behind. The situation requires urgency and I encourage the Minister strongly. We should not interfere in the NCCA process, which must be non-political, but it appears to be unwieldy. The programming languages that we learned at school are completely obsolete now. Some were obsolete while we were learning them, if truth be told. The world is changing constantly.

That is the point. We need to keep up to date. The NCCA process is very good. It is very well intentioned and the right body of people are involved in it but it is taking too long in this fast moving sector. Britain is already ahead of the game in that regard and parents in this country are already ahead of the game but, as usual, the State is behind the curve. We need to ensure all students are up to date because we will face severe challenges and we must improve those skills and widen the skills base. This is a very important part of the process but it must move quickly.

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