James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 7 and 25 together

Gabhaim buíochas le Teachta Daly. Deputy Timmins is on this question as well. The question refers to the collaboration between innovation hubs, industry and third level institutions. My Department has, I believe a strong economic focus; it should have and does have. I am committed to making sure this is an economic Ministry that drives the needs of industry and engages with industry, labour force planning and skills development and the critical role of research and development in driving that knowledge economy. We should be working very closely with industry and taking the lead from skills needs of the future. The national skills group is working on that and on understanding what the projected needs are while supporting and collaborating with industry.

That collaboration between the tertiary system across all the different educational frameworks and enterprise is critical. I have underpinned that through a number of strategic engagements with enterprise agencies such as IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland, with representative bodies such as IBEC, ISME and others, individual enterprises and multinationals and indeed many firms that are leading-edge in technology and research and who are active in Ireland, including in Deputy Daly's region. He will be familiar with them. Part of that is driven at a policy level through platforms, including the national skills council, which I mentioned; the regional skills forums, where we understand the current market needs and emerging needs of the labour force; real-time insights from partners working in sectors; and then programmes like Springboard+, Microcredentials and Microqualifications and Skills to Advance. These look at the skills needs and how industry and the education sector can work together and supply different course offerings that are tailored and flexible to the needs of the learner, particularly the working learner, who might take a full-time offering but will perhaps take a microcredit and plug one on top of the other to gain a further qualification.

There is also the Research Ireland accelerating research to commercialisation, ARC, hubs programme, cofunded by Department and the Government with support from the EU. It aims to establish new models for regional innovation and entrepreneurial training. That looks to accelerate the transition to the market of research coming from a higher education institute. It is from the fab to the lab, as we say in the case of semiconductors; similarly, it applies to many other fields as well. That is so important because academics are often performing an outstanding piece of work but they may not be equipped to take it to the next level - to the market, and to commercialise it or even bring it to mass production to benefit many more people.

I am engaging with the Deputy on the urology project he advocated for. It is a very interesting project. It is a good example of where we can take that industry collaboration and plug it into the research ecosystem. There is a synergy and it lifts all. I welcome it and I am quite keen to engage further on that one. There are many others, if we look at the ARC hub and for health and tech. I was at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, RCSI, yesterday. It has a collaboration with the ATU on health technology. It has also been working through that. There is a western regional skills forum that allows business in counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon to assess and develop skills for their employees and work in partnership with them.

On the technological universities more generally, one of their aims is to provide technical expertise rooted in the regions, working with and close to industry to allow that local and regional collaboration to progress. That is such an important project and I am very committed that. There are a number of initiatives I want to roll out further within the technological universities over the course of this year and subsequent years. There is a lot of work going on. A lot done, more to do.

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