MINISTER FOR Education Ruairí Quinn has announced 6,000 new free education places as part of the Government’s Springboard initiative for skilled workers who have lost their jobs.
Mr Quinn said 36 universities, institutes of technology and privately run higher education colleges would be offering places on 220 part-time courses on a diverse variety of subjects.
“Springboard is specifically designed to reach out to those people who never expected to find themselves unemployed, who have skillsets including third-level degrees . . . but who find themselves in a sector for which there is no longer a demand,” Mr Quinn said yesterday.
The scheme, aimed at people living on benefits without affecting their right to receive welfare payments, was launched as part of the Coalition’s Jobs Initiative in May of last year.
Mr Quinn said more than 3,500 people were due to graduate this month from the first round of Springboard programmes. “Not only do these graduates have up-to-date qualifications, they also have a wealth of experience and workforce skills to bring to an employer.”
He said the initiative provided “a dynamic pipeline of job-ready graduates” with fresh skills and qualifications that were relevant to expanding growth sectors in the economy.
Following feedback from the first phase of Springboard, eligibility criteria has been expanded to include people who were previously self-employed and those in receipt of an extended number of social welfare payments such as disability and carer’s allowance.
Course subjects will include pharmaceuticals; international financial services; ICT; and medical devices. Languages and business start-up skills will also be included.
Ian Dodson of the Digital Marketing Centre criticised Mr Quinn for extending Springboard “based on graduation rates, not based on employability rates”. Despite this, he told RTÉ Radio One’s News at One that the scheme was a “good” programme.
“He’s [Mr Quinn] extending it based on graduation rates, not based on employability rates. So he’s saying that the first group of people have graduated so let’s extend the programme by another 6,000 people. But surely it would be better to look at what percentage of those people are actually employed, not just graduating,” Mr Dodson said.
However, the new places were welcomed by business lobby group Ibec. The organisation’s head of education policy, Tony Donohue, said Ibec was working with the Higher Education Authority to support the more than 3,500 graduates due to complete the programme this month. “Feedback from enterprise to date has been very positive,” he said.
