Launch of the North-South Higher Education Conference

By collaboration, the Higher and Further Education sector and the business community can help Ireland adapt to the needs of a global economy.

This call came from Aideen McGinley, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Employment and Learning, who said that, by working together, they could develop the versatile and highly skilled workforce needed to grow the island’s economy. She was speaking at the sixth North-South Higher Education Conference at the Grand Hotel in Dublin.

Addressing delegates from the three sectors, Mrs McGinley stressed the importance of Higher and Further Education for the future international competitiveness of the whole of Ireland:

“The Higher and Further Education sectors have a crucial and significant role in developing our skills base and educational attainment, linking directly to the needs of business and engaging in local, regional and national economic development across the country.

“Our future international competitiveness hinges upon our capacity to develop higher level skills and knowledge.  Higher education can be a major driver for a country’s ‘knowledge economy’.  It provides thousands of new graduate entrants to the workforce each year and our employment record for graduates demonstrates the value that employers attach to the outputs of higher education.”

She challenged delegates to play their role in the creation of a modern, successful economy with high-performing, productive workplaces:

“The opportunity for higher education to meet the needs of the 21st Century workplace is an exciting and challenging venture one that we have shared responsibility to work together on.”

Mrs McGinley jointly opened the conference with Brigid McManus, Secretary General at the Department of Education and Science in the Republic of Ireland.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

  1. The conference is the sixth and last in a series of North-South Conferences on Higher Education, aimed at addressing key issues of mutual interest to both parts of the island.
  2. Entitled “What role for Higher Education in the 21st Century workplace”, the conference aims to tackle the issue of how the higher and further education system can be developed to meet the changing needs of business and the emerging skills demands of a global economy, through a series of workshops and speeches.
  3. The keynote speaker was Mr Turlough O’Sullivan, Director General of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation.
  4. Media enquiries to the Department for Employment and Learning Press Office on 028 9025 7872.