Education and Training Provision
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-02
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James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

A bit of shorthand I often use, and I know a number of State agencies also use, to talk about the pace of change is the four Ds - digitalisation, decarbonisation, demographics and deglobalisation. All four of these things are happening quickly and we are living in a fast-changing world. The Deputy is right that we need to be adaptable and flexible. Some of the ways in which we are responding to that include, as I mentioned, the skills round tables in which I am engaging, where each month I do a different sectoral dive with employers and training agencies around the table to understand their needs.
We also have the national skills council, which was created last year and is headed up by Dr. Kevin Marshall. A number of my officials are involved in it. It looks at the skills needs that are emerging. We have a skills observatory, which is effectively a database that provides real-time information about skills gaps, skills needs and what types of vacancies there are. There are some new occupations coming into being and some occupations that perhaps are no longer as much in demand. To get ahead of that, we need to ask if we have the people, and in many cases it is the same people, who can be skilled up for those.
I mentioned the AI ready programme. We are also exploring a number of national skills academies, which are sector-specific partnerships between colleges, employers and industries to make sure we can provide the type of training in real time that they and their industries need.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-02/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:14+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-02