Technology Skills 2022: Ireland’s Third ICT Skills Action Plan sets out priority actions to meet Ireland’s needs for graduates skilled in computing and electronic and electrical engineering to support and drive economic performance over the coming years.

The Action Plan is a collaborative effort by Government, the education and training system and industry to meet Ireland’s high level ICT skills needs. Overall implementation  of the Plan is supervised  by a High-Level Steering Group chaired by the Department of Education and Skills, with senior representation from the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, and composed of representatives from government departments, national agencies, industry, education and training providers. 

The main target in the Plan is to  increase the total number of graduates with high-level ICT skills by more than 5,000 every year by 2022. Some of the measures to grow graduate numbers include:

• Expanding the number of graduates from mainstream computing and electrical and electronic engineering courses in higher education from 4,220 to 4,830 by 2022.
• Expanding the numbers of relevant programmes by Skillnet Ireland (the National Agency for Workforce Learning), which are aligned with the NQF (the Irish National Qualification Framework) by more than 1,000 by 2022.
• Attracting more women towards potential career development in digital and emerging technologies. 
• Providing new options to embed high-level ICT apprenticeships within the education and training sector to attract more than 1,000 new applicants per year by 2020.
• A high-level ICT reskilling pathway to provide opportunities for up to 2,750 people from diverse backgrounds between 2019 and 2022.

Training programmes target areas of high demand and high potential growth, including Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Animation, Gaming, Blockchain, Internet of Things, 3D Printing, Augmented and Virtual Reality, Cybersecurity/Next Generation Security.