James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

There were a couple of options raised and I will try to come back to the Deputy on each of them.

Career guidance and counselling is something I tend to very much support and I am keen to increase the provision of it. As we know, it is extremely difficult for students, typically at a young age, to make choices that may have implications for their entire life journey after that. There is a bit of a pressure point around how to make that decision at the right time very quickly. However, I intend to support that area in terms of further support for career guidance and for counselling for the burgeoning schools.

Yesterday, the Minister of State, Deputy Harkin, and I attended the Mount Lucas national construction skills hub. We saw the launching of a new platform, Skillnet MMC Accelerate, which is a website that allows those with an interest in construction careers to consider a breathtaking range of options and follow through on that interest by clicking through different courses, different study options and different apprenticeships to see how they might play out. I credit the organisers and those involved in that platform. I would like to see those type of platforms applied to many other sectors across the board. This is an example of what can be done and what is being done already.

The Deputy spoke about students who may take on a course and find halfway through that it is not the right course for them. In the programme for Government, we have committed to examining second-chance applications. As with all these things, there is a balance because unlimited funding for continuing to change courses might be desirable from a societal point of view but economically unsustainable. There has to be some tipping point. I have some sympathy in this regard because I changed course. I studied maths originally, but I ended up studying law. I did it part-time, by night, while I was working in town. I came across to lectures every evening after work. Therefore, I have sympathy for people who end up pursuing second careers and different course options. It is a good thing to do. The day of the job for life is gone and people now end up pursuing many different paths through life and, indeed, change and retrain. Reskilling, upskilling and lifelong learning is a core objective of my Department to support. We are keen to continue to allow people have those opportunities at any stage in life to find their new path forward.

In terms of the individual cases, the Deputy mentioned two that I noted. The first was around a student who left - maybe dropped out - halfway through the year. Then he mentioned what sounds like a very unfortunate individual who checked Google Maps and found that the other calculations did not seem to accord. If the Deputy wants to bring those cases to my attention after the session or if he wants to write to me on them - I will not get into individual cases on the floor of the House and I do not have the details - I would be quite happy to look into them and see if we can progress anything in the background.

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