Cathal Crowe

Good morning, Clare.

Look, the National Training Fund is a very positive scheme.

It's around quite a number of years now.

But recently, the International Monetary Fund ranked Ireland first globally in terms of skill readiness index.

So we have an enviable position globally on this.

The money, the spend of this has gone up hugely over the years.

So in 2026, the spend will be 94% higher than in 2021.

It's treble what it was in 2016.

So Minister James Lawless, my colleague, has very much opened up the purse strings.

There was a need for agility in this because I'm a County Clare TD, but I remember in 2009, the Dell factory in the neighbouring county of Limerick closed with the loss of 1,900 jobs.

And it was the National Training Fund became the main vehicle to reskill workers.

So you cannot just have it all

spent and allocated into here and now.

You do need to leave a little bit in the rainy day fund.

And that was instrumental in the Midwest region.

But I would say there are many benefits week in, week out where small and medium sized enterprise are directly benefiting from this.

It's not tax recoupable, but they certainly derive immense benefits from their workforce.

So we are recognised globally as having a leading edge here.

But not the entire 1.7 billion is sitting there.

There's a need for a certain amount to be unallocated so that it can respond to debt-like situations.