Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

One of the main aims of the Bill is to encourage the contribution of research and innovation to the economic, social, cultural and environmental development and sustainability of Ireland and to strengthen the engagement of the research and innovation system with the Government, public bodies, enterprise, non-governmental organisations and cultural institutions. We all welcome that.

I want to speak about County Kerry. I warmly welcome the investment made in the past and present in our university in Tralee. Having that educational facility in Tralee is of massive importance because it gives our young people the education they need in our county. Of course it is hard to get housing but however hard and expensive it is, it is nearer in your own county than if you were travelling to another county. There is massive capital investment going on there at the moment. The Minister was there recently for an event with regard to construction. I congratulate the main contractors and the workmen on the ground daily. They are there today in the rain. I thank them for the excellent, good, sound work they are doing. That will be a place of education for our youngsters for many years to come.

While we are talking about innovation and skills, I want to talk about how difficult it is today to get other skilled people such as plumbers, electricians, plasterers, bricklayers and carpenters. We are not doing enough to teach young people those skills. My goodness, if you had training in any of those skills and could say you were a qualified carpenter, electrician, plumber, plasterer or bricklayer and had practical experience, you would be set up for life. You will never meet a plumber or electrician who will see a hungry day. If you can plaster a house - which is very difficult with plastering over your head, hardwalling and all of that - or are a carpenter, you will never see a hungry day. It is great to have titles behind your name, to graduate with diplomas and so on. I respect that very much and, as a person who never sat for a leaving certificate, I have all the more admiration for people who get a good education and I look up to those people.

I also have nothing but the highest regard for the people who have a pair of hands hanging out of them and good engagement inside their heads, because you need the brain to drive the hands. What we should be doing in our schools is reminding young people that what we will call the higher education side of things is great, but it is not necessarily for everybody. We should be encouraging young boys and girls to see other ways of having a trade or profession, something that will stand to them forever. We should be teaching them those skills from a very early age.

We had it in the vocational schools long ago but there are other skills, for example, in hospitality. While some places might be getting bad press at the moment, we must always remember that the tourism capital of the Western world is a town called Killarney in County Kerry. We are better at tourism than anywhere else in the world, and we do not boast about it either. What I would say about the tourism capital of the world is that what we need in County Kerry is people who are qualified as chefs, qualified in all the different types of bartending or qualified in running hotels, guesthouses and our lovely bars and other places of hospitality. We need people to be trained and upskilled in those areas, which is very important.

When talking about education, we should be looking at all of those spheres of education. There is the person who is very brainy and advanced, who wants to go on and have degree upon degree, and will do very well and, hopefully, make a good living for himself or herself. Of course, we want to encourage people. However, I always say that there is an awful difference between a young person saying they want to go away to Australia or to America or England, and saying they have to go because there is nothing here for them. That is wrong. What we want to do is keep those lovely young people here if they want to stay here. We want to have them educated, upskilled and ready for work here and we want to ensure there is work for them and, of course, that they can afford to live here.

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