Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the organisations in attendance. They come from a wide range of areas, from pure research to employment upskilling, aimed at delivering excellence in skills and providing a place for people who find it difficult to get their education in other places. Both Ms Healy and Mr. McLoughlin have shown the strength of the organisations that have helped them get their education. They have also shown their own excellence.

I could spend 15 minutes addressing these issues, never mind five minutes. I want to get people's feelings about whether the European Year of Skills has moved the dial. Ms Donnery spoke about some of the events that Skillnet Ireland hosted. I was very excited about the European Year of Skills in May last year when it was announced but I am not sure it landed in the way I had hoped. I am not sure it has permeated in to the national consciousness in the way I thought it would, but I hope I am wrong. Maybe I have just been looking in the wrong places.

Ms Bird spoke about the emphasis being purely on workplace skills and she is absolutely right. I do not see a focus on just taking up a skill for personal development. Who knows down the line where a person will end up. I was a bartender for five years while going through college and while that did not help me much in teaching, by God, when I became a politician the ability to be able to talk to people suddenly came into its own. You never know where the skills you learn along your life path are going to become useful, even in terms of finding personal fulfilment or within the workplace. There was a missed opportunity in that regard. Perhaps Ms Bird wishes to comment on that.

Speaking about the end-of-year ceremony for the European Year of Skills, Ms Donnery asked what comes next. What a pertinent question. What does come next?

I find Dr. van Houten's research excellent; it is really brilliant. When I look at the chart, I ask myself how we will encourage companies to move from selective investment and moderate involvement to high investment and high involvement. When I talk to employers, they say they have an interest in this but that one of the key problems they have is staff retention.

I found Dr. van Houten's comments around the demand side versus the supply side very interesting. It suggests that people are putting on courses and looking to upskill people but are not finding an outlet within the organisation for those increased skill sets. If a worker is upskilled and then not given an outlet for that new skill set, that worker will be lost, in a sense. For me, it makes perfect business sense to ensure there is high investment and high involvement. In Dr. van Houten's chart, how do we convert the green to the blue?