Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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403. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the progress in meeting 74% of industry demands domestically for information and communications technology, ICT, professionals by 2018 as set out in the 2014 ICT skills action plan by year, by total number, by percentage in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [2194/16]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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ICT graduate output from the higher education sector has doubled since the first ICT action plan was published in 2011.In 2012, 31% of demand was met by graduates from mainstream Level 8, 9 and 10 courses in ICT from Universities and Institutes of Technology. The total number of graduates from ICT courses has doubled since 2011.The 2014 ICT Action Plan contains a range of measures to seek to increase supply of graduates including awareness raising, incentivised places on mainstream courses and full-time and part-time ICT courses provided through Springboard+.

In 2014, total ICT graduate output was 57% of demand. The progress in increasing the supply of graduates in 2014 and the projected increase for 2015 is set out in the following table.

Progress towards ICT Action Plan targets

It should be noted that the data above does not include non-Springboard+ Level 8 ICT graduates from the private higher education providers (e.g. National College Ireland, Dublin Business School, Griffith College et al).