Neil McDonnell

Our adult literacy, numeracy and active problem solving, as they call it, is below OECD standards.

We have a fixation on third level degrees and qualifications here that's blinding us to the need for plumbers and chefs and carpenters and bricklayers.

They're the skills that are in demand now.

And we are not training young people into those available jobs now because we want to spend this money on universities.

And lastly, I'll say, Clare, you know, the only direct funding that employers get from this is through Skillnet Ireland funding.

That's been static at 53 million for the last three years.

It is scheduled to be static for the next three years.

It was meant to be at 100 million last year.

So employers are getting a 4% return on the 1.2 billion they put into the Exchequer for worker training.

That's a bad return.

What we want to see, I mean, the deputy mentioned, for example, the mentors training.

Our mentors training budget has been reduced by 45%, reduced from 45% from last year to this.

And that has been really, really valued training for those business owners who want to expand and scale.

And if we are going to have an economy where the domestic economy, the indigenous economy is ever going to compete with our foreign multinational sector, we have to have an educated business owner base.

And that can only be done by this sort of in-work and work-adjacent training, not in universities.

not under the type of third level training that we're trying to divert all this funding into.

It's all training, isn't it?

Yes, it is, but we have to have horses for courses.

So, for example, the sorts of areas that our businesses are falling down in, again, these are not ISME figures, these are DESE figures, they're EU Commission figures.

Our SMEs are underperforming on information and communications technology training, digital intensity, electronic information sharing.