Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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185. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the funding provided by his Department, either directly or through a State agency, for upskilling, reskilling, and further education of the workforce in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and to date in 2024, in tabular form.; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23588/24]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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In preparing a response to this PQ, I understand the term workforce as referring to the general workforce in Ireland and not the staff of agencies under the aegis of the Department, thus internal training initiatives do not come within scope of this response.

It is essential that Irish enterprise has access to high quality, adaptable and flexible talent. In order to meet this demand, my Department and its enterprise agencies work closely with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, as well as the wider education and training system, with a view to building and retaining a highly skilled indigenous workforce to serve the needs of the economy.

My Department and its enterprise agencies actively participate in Ireland’s responsive National Skills Architecture, which aims to ensure that education and training provision is optimally aligned with identified skills needs across the enterprise base. This architecture is overseen by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.

The table below outlines total Training Grants paid to IDA Ireland client companies in the years 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Grant Payments for the year 2024 are not yet available.

Under its strategic priority of Promote, the Health and Safety Authority provides a number of awareness raising learning resources to the formal education system and for the workplace. Such health and safety e-learning resources are delivered free of charge through an online portal and can be used to support upskilling, reskilling, and further education among the workforce.

Expenditure incurred by the HSA relating to the on-going development of its e-learning platform, HSAlearning.ie is set out in the table below.

Furthermore, as the competent authority under Regulation 10(1)(g) of the European Communities (Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road and Use of Transportable Pressure Equipment) Regulations 2011 to 2023, the Authority is required to:

• approve driver basic and tanker specialisation training courses;
• examine persons who have completed such training;
• issue driver training certificates; and
• administer the safety adviser examination scheme.