Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies Flaherty and Niamh Smyth for tabling this question.

The National Skills Council is the high-level advisory group on skills in Ireland and provides an opportunity for strategic dialogue and advice to inform Government decision-making to ensure our skills ecosystem continues to be flexible, agile and responsive to the needs of the future world of work. A key work plan priority for the council has been to support the OECD review of our national skills strategy, which I initiated last year and is nearing completion. This will be the largest review of our skills infrastructure in a generation. We have asked the OECD to examine the skills infrastructure, what works, what could work better and how our national skills strategy measures up to best international practice. The OECD has undertaken an intensive body of work and has held a series of bilateral engagements with members of the National Skills Council. There were three extraordinary meetings of the council in 2022, which facilitated a strong input in the review and, I hope, embedded a partnership approach throughout it.

As the OECD project reaches its final stages, this partnership with all stakeholders, under the aegis of the National Skills Council, continues to be central in our approach to addressing future skills needs. The council's members will have a key role in assessing and prioritising the OECD's recommendations for the next step in the development of a skills ecosystem in response to the key mega trends that have been highlighted in the OECD review, those being, digitisation, decarbonisation and demographic change.

Intensive work by my Department, including the secretariat for the National Skills Council in my Department, remains focused on finalising the review. This work will inform how the council's mandate can best be shaped for the remainder of 2023 and the future in advancing what must be ambitious goals for skills, talent and workforce development. The OECD's project will inform us on the future mandate, direction, work plan and programme for the National Skills Council. It will also present to the Government and the wider Oireachtas a number of policy considerations. Two of the areas where we must do much more are how we support people in work who need to upskill and reskill and how we support employers, particularly SMEs. We await the outcome of the review.

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