Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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158. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the progress to date to meet 74% of industry demands domestically for information and communications technology, ICT, professionals by 2018 as set out in the 2014 ICT skills action plan; the annual numbers for this target in total and the percentage rate, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28241/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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In March 2014, my Department and the Department of Jobs Enterprise and Innovation, launched an ICT Skills Action Plan 2014 - 2018. The Plan was developed in close collaboration with industry. The plan sets out a collaborative, system-wide response, across Departments, agencies and the education and enterprise sectors aimed at building the domestic supply of graduates from the education system and ensuring Ireland maintains a strong ICT talent pool and promoting Ireland internationally as a centre for high-level ICT skills. Implementation of the Plan is underway, with oversight of a high level steering group comprising DES, DJEI and representatives from industry and the education sector.

A number of significant developments have taken place since the ICT Action Plan was published in 2014. In 2015, my Department published the Digital Strategy for Schools and commenced work on the development of the Regional Skills Fora. The Department has also commenced funding for the Associate Profession ICT and new Apprenticeship models are now being developed. The National Skills Strategy 2025 was published in January 2016, which includes a range of relevant actions.

In this context, the Action Plan for Education includes an action related to the review of the existing ICT Action Plan and publication of a new Plan.  This review has already commenced and it is expected to be completed by Q4 2016.

Updated data on progress in increasing the supply of ICT graduates levels 8 to 10 and updated projections for the period to 2018 are set out in the table. The updated figures show that the actual number of graduates on mainstream programmes at levels 8 to 10 was higher than previously projected for 2014.  The First Destinations Report for the 2014 graduate cohort also shows that a higher proportion of graduates entered the labour market as opposed to pursuing further studies compared to the 2013 cohort.

These new projections include data for graduate output from publicly funded programmes (publicly funded HEI mainstream programmes at levels 8 to 10 and all Springboard+ programmes) and output from private colleges.

ICT Action Plan target update 3.10.16