Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Conmhairle for the opportunity to discuss the OECD report on skills in the Dáil today. It is a timely intervention as yesterday also marked the beginning of the European Year of Skills 2023. This is the year in which we are all challenged to look at the skills in our own country but also to look at skills in our own lives and what skills we may wish to learn or avail of during the course of 2023. This is a year that will focus on what we can do to address skills shortages in our country and also to help people engage in learning through all stages of their lives.

There is no doubt that this country punches above its weight when it comes to the numbers who pursue a third level education. It is very clear from the OECD report that we are not just slightly above the OECD average but very significantly above the average when it comes to third level participation. However, our development as individuals, people, citizens and employees and our desire to reach our full potential do not begin or end with a degree or professional qualification. Education now comes in so many different forms and ways. It is not something a person does at a certain age of his or her life and then no more. We have a well-worn path in this country of a successful leaving certificate examination, a good CAO day, a pathway to university and then on to a job. That works well for many and that is good. It also poses other questions, however. It can place inordinate pressure on young people and by channelling or funnelling and trying to narrow the conversation around skills, it can actually contribute to skills shortages throughout the country, particularly in certain parts of the economy. For far too long, young people have perhaps believed all of their options are confined to a CAO system that does not account for further education and training or apprenticeships. I do not think that is fair on young people, nor is it fair on Ireland or good for well-being, which is why we are changing it. This is about ensuring that every single person in Ireland has an ability to reach his or her full potential. Without making changes, we are limiting the possibilities for people.

We must also recall that when we talk about access to education - if I make no other point, this is one I wish to emphasise - it is not something people do in a time-bound age period. We will increasingly see people wanting and requiring to access education and skills at a certain time of their lives. Perhaps students will no longer just be the 18- and 19-year-olds who go straight from school to university. More and more, it will be people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s and beyond. They could be people with dependants, children they are trying to look after at home or parents for whom they are trying to care. They may be people with full-time jobs who are trying to juggle life and all it throws at them while availing of an education and having a right to be able to do so.

The OECD report, which the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, and I published yesterday, is a culmination of 15 months of work. I thank my Department colleagues and OECD staff for their work on the report. It lays out the blueprint for the change we have started to implement. It states very starkly that Irish people run the risk of falling behind because they do not have the skills they need to thrive. This issue is most stark in the areas of digital skills and green skills. The pace of digitalisation has accelerated and we must make sure we never leave a generation of people behind. We need to invest in providing digital skills to each and every person in the country. We cannot live in a country where one in two of us lack basic digital skills, as is currently the case. We talk about online government and public services and moving everything online. We saw that process accelerate during the Covid-19 pandemic. The types of skills vary too. For some, it can be learning how to Facetime a relative, while for others, it can be paying their property tax or a bill. It can be about how to build a website to put people's business online. For many of us, it can be about acquiring the skills to keep pace with our jobs.

The report also reminds us of the challenges the country and the world face in addressing the climate emergency. We know we need more people to help us make our homes warmer, for example. The Government's action plan on climate culminates in the idea that we will retrofit at least 500,000 more homes by 2030. I am pleased to say we are making good progress on this goal. We need more people to work in this area if we are to reach those targets, however. I am pleased there are encouraging signs. Already this year, 930 people have taken part in retrofitting training. There are, though, other areas in which we need to do better. Sales of electric vehicles, EVs, outweighed the sale of diesel cars this year for the first time ever. That is good progress but we need to make sure we live in a country in which we have mechanics with the ability to repair EVs. That is why we are going to open EV training centres.

Ireland wants to be a wind exporter. That is a massive opportunity to go from being a net importer of energy to being an exporter of clean renewable energy. Again, how do we obtain the skills to meet this ambition? We had some very good conversations at Government about this yesterday. As we pursue the offshore wind agenda, how do we make sure we keep jobs that did not really exist in this country only a few years ago, now that we have an education system that can respond to those training needs? I am thinking, for example, of the wind turbine maintenance apprenticeship programme in County Kerry provided by Kerry Education and Training Board, KETB. These are some of the fundamental issues with which we need to grapple. As new jobs arise, there will be new challenges and responses to those challenges. For this reason, we are placing an unrelenting focus on apprenticeships to ensure we keep up with the demands of the economy. As I said, it is the reason we have to end the snobby or narrow view of education. It is the reason we want to ensure people do not stop learning after they finish school, a college degree or even a master's degree. More and more, we want learning to be seen as something that continues throughout a person's life, albeit in different ways.

The most striking finding of the report is how participation in lifelong learning, reskilling and upskilling in Ireland falls below the top EU performers such as Sweden and Finland. Let us not get this finding wrong or misinterpret it. Ireland is above the EU average when it comes to access to lifelong learning. That is not where we want to be, however. We do not just want to be a little bit better than average. We want to be among the top performers. We want to be leading the European Union when it comes to access to lifelong learning. We need to make sure people do not fall off a cliff in terms of learning when they move beyond the traditional tertiary age. This does not serve us well as people or as a country.

This requires a fundamental change in how the education system works. We must be serious about lifelong learning, a phrase that sometimes sounds like jargon. It effectively means being able to dip in and out of education in a way that works for the individual while carrying on with life and work. If we are to do that, the education system needs to be more flexible. It will be less about people packing their bags and heading to university for four years at that stage of their lives. That is not practical for some people who are holding down a full-time job. It will be more about making sure courses are provided in a flexible manner. It also means that we need to financially support people in how they access education. We want to encourage more people to engage in part-time education. We need to change the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grant scheme so that people can access it while undertaking part-time education. My Department is examining SUSI for part-time learning, and I intend to make this a priority in the months ahead.

With the European Year of Skills 2023, we know we face a common challenge. Learning as we know it has changed and systems and people now need to change with it. With economic and social megatrends, particularly the serial digital revolution that is under way and the climate transformation unfolding before us, the change in both our professional and personal lives will only continue to happen faster.

As we continue to grapple with and invest in areas such as digital and data skills, it becomes clearer that as the volume of data at our fingertips grows and technology advances to be ever more accessible, the challenge is to have and harness human skills as well as digital and data skills. This is another important point I want to make. We need to stop using the phrase "soft skills". More and more, we know that soft skills are actually core skills. Skills such as connecting, communicating, collaborating in teams, leading, managing, managing change, deploying resilience, intercultural skills and, critically, the skill of creativity are in our DNA as Irish people. They are not soft skills, to use that dismissive language. They are actually core skills that employers want to see in the workplace and that we require to be well-rounded individuals. We must invest more in our people. The people are our gold. Other countries have big gold reserves; we have our people. They are our most precious natural resource.

It has been said that an education is the one thing no one can take away from a person. That remains true but there is now a new conception of education. It is no longer just something formal that happens to someone young. It is a life course of informal and formal learning. It is the passport that carries and cloaks the individual through change and challenge, the business through volatility and complexity and the collective - our country - through times of uncertainty and ambiguity.

If the global challenge then is to boldly and bravely embrace a fully transformed 21st century model of learning and growth, the trick for Ireland is that we are just as ambitious and successful in our pursuit of this as the previous generation was in embracing education. We have good form in this regard. If we look back at our educational progress as a country across successive Governments and years, we have made much progress. Now, we need to make the same degree of progress in changing educational realities and landscapes.

My Department will now seek to take forward the key OECD report recommendations at pace, including examining options for updating our legislative framework and strengthening the role of the National Skills Council. We need to examine the role of the National Training Fund, which all employers pay into, to see whether it needs to be modernised and ensure it continues to have an appropriate and broad focus on skills priorities for the whole country as we look at future trends and needs. I look forward to working closely with a revitalised National Skills Council to prioritise this important work. I thank everybody who serves and has served on our National Skills Council. I look forward to the discussion on how it can be further reformed and strengthened and how we can provide Skillnet Ireland, our agency that reaches into business to provide for upskilling and reskilling, with further support.

As I launched the European Year of Skills yesterday, I asked every individual in Ireland to learn one new skill this year. I will not ask the Ceann Comhairle in real time what his might be but I certainly intend to try to take up one or two new skills this year. Throughout the year, my Department will be undertaking significant awareness raising, highlighting that notwithstanding the changes we need to make or the reforms to come, there are already many opportunities out there to upskill and reskill and to learn in a way that works for everyone. That is the challenge we are setting and I know we will rise to it. Ireland has always been an island of learning, a country of creatives and a people known for ingenuity with the capacity for change. We need not be daunted by the scale of the OECD report and the scale of transformation we are living through, but we do have work to do. We need to go and do it.

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