REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE ANNUAL SKILLNETS CONFERENCE ON LIFELONG LEARNING
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE ANNUAL SKILLNETS CONFERENCE ON LIFELONG LEARNING FOR PEOPLE AND FIRMS
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Go raibh maith agaibh as an fháilte chroíúil sin. Tá lúcháir orm bheith anseo libh ar maidin agus tá mé buíoch de Máire Hunt as cuireadh a thabhairt dom.
Good morning everybody.
I am very pleased to be here this morning. Thank you all for your warm welcome, and a special thanks to Maire Hunt for her very kind invitation to speak at this important conference and in this lovely venue - The Royal Hospital which has itself changed careers many times and learnt to adapt to changing times.
Why we are here at this conference is not some abstraction but the concrete business of adjusting our business practices to flourish in a world that demands a commitment to lifelong learning. Not so very long ago we took for granted that it was enough to learn a skill, acquire a body of knowledge at a young age that would almost inevitably last an entire career. How that landscape changed as we experienced what can only be described as a transformation in Ireland, a transformation that has affected so many facets of life in recent years, with the phenomenal economic growth being one of the most striking. The Ireland of only a few short decades ago was a weak and poor one with a badly-structured economy overly dependent on trade with our nearest neighbour, Britain and countless numbers emigrating in search of opportunity denied at home. Seamus Heaney’s evocative words from the Canton of Expectation coin the mood of those days well when he said “we lived under high-banked clouds of resignation.”
Today by comparison we live in an Ireland that is successful, prosperous and one of the most dynamic in the EU. Today we export computer software not our people, we have for the first time become a country of net inward migration and many poor struggling countries around the world look to us for inspiration as they try to emulate our success.
Many factors melded together to change Ireland’s fortunes but it is no accident that when we educated only a tiny percentage of our people we realised only a tiny percentage of our potential. The democratisation of education, the widening of access to decent schools, colleges, universities and institutes of technology has been at the heart of our transformation for it has unlocked the power of our greatest natural resource, the genius of our people. In the early 70’s there were 30,000 people in third level education with about 4,500 in technological colleges, twenty-five years later the number in third level had more than trebled to over 100,000 with more than 40,000 in the Technical Colleges and Institutes of Technology. It is their ingenuity and hard work which has made Ireland a good place to do business, attracted considerable foreign investment, developed a native entrepreneurial sector, promoted a strong social partnership and placed us at the forefront of the second industrial revolution. A remarkable achievement for a country which missed the first one by a mile.
It is often said that in business, the only constant is change. John Newman, the intellectual giant of modern education said that “ to be human is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.” The employment landscape today is a very different one from that of even twenty or thirty years ago. The job for life is for the most part obsolete and we know that going forward, the rate at which our skills and knowledge will become obsolete will continue to increase.
Lifelong learning is not an optional extra it is an essential element in maintaining and developing our intellectual and skills base on which depends our economic strength. With sixty per cent of all new jobs in the European Union at the high-skill end of the market we are obliged to turn on its head the daft old adage that makes that necessity an urgent one ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’. Whoever invented that phrase has not seen the octogenarian Irish men and women who are learning computer skills in classes all over the country! One old true saying is that “ education is easily carried” and it is. Its transformative powers are measureable in economic terms. We know that each additional year of education or training provides a ten per cent pay increase in a lifetime of work. but almost immeasureable are the many other life-enhancing consequences, the fun of learning, the joy of discovering an unknown talent or developing a new skill, the confidence of achieving, the fresh life options, the renewed interest in life, the revelation of true potential. And out of that strengthening of the individual, comes a strengthening of family, street, community, workplace and country. Education pays huge dividends from promoting full social inclusion to sharpening our competitiveness. It is our best protection from the winds of economic change which blow jobs to cheaper locations or render today’s products obsolete tomorrow.
It is vital for us as individuals, as firms, and for the country as a whole, that we make the necessary investments of resources and time in training and development so that we are ready for whatever the future holds. Skillnets with its support from the state, employers and employees, its rootedness in social partnership, its focus on the individual in his or her workplace, and its scholarly search for evidence of best practice, offers reassurance that this causeway to the future is already being built on solid foundations.
Praise is a due to the many business people who have played a part in setting up the fifty-seven Training Networks and delivering the message about the network business-led training concept to their peers in the business world. I applaud their vision, and even more their ability to articulate that vision to others. The opportunities created would be worthless without the interest and the commitment of those who pursue this chance for education and training. We as a country are indebted to them for their hunger for knowledge and pursuit of skill. Their dedication and delight at the changes learning works in their lives - these are Skillnets best advertisements and its vindication.
I would like to congratulate Maire Hunt, and her Skillnets team, for the contribution that they have made to the development of broad participative training, and not least, for their organisation of today’s conference.
May I wish you a most successful conference.
Go raibh maith agaibh.