Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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Question 629: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the support he provides, within the education sector, to the computer game industry; if his attention has been drawn to the fact that this industry is globally economically bigger than the film industry; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37393/09]

Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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The digital media industry, which includes the computer games sector, is an industry with potential for significant growth. There is a diverse range of courses relevant to the computer game industry available in the further and higher education sectors in Ireland. A number of dedicated courses are available in computer games development and many broader ICT and engineering courses also contain relevant skills training. Information on all relevant courses is available on the Qualifax website www.qualifax.ie.

The Higher Education Authority (HEA) is funding a number of awareness initiatives to promote ICT courses to prospective students and the HEA continues to provide funding to third level institutions, both to improve the attractiveness of existing ICT courses and to set up new ones.

2,500 new places were made available this year to enable unemployed persons pursue undergraduate and postgraduate courses on a part-time basis in areas identified by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs as being relevant to the skills need of the manufacturing and internationally traded services sector. Places on a number of ICT programmes, including a multimedia and computer games development course, were approved under this scheme.