Calling all Offaly businesses: SOLAS launches its Future Skills Ireland podcast

SOLAS, the Further Education and Training (FET) Authority for Ireland, has officially launched its first-ever Future Skills Ireland podcast series. The podcast comes at a crucial time for SOLAS, following the recent inaugural publication of the National Skills Council providing First Strategic Advice to Government on Skills Priorities.

The podcasts – available on Spotify, Apple and YouTube and hosted by Shauna Dunlop, Director of Director of Research, Future Skills Needs, Statistics and Risk at SOLAS – aim to start a new national conversation on skills, featuring real life stories of careers and the skills that helped to shape them, alongside discussion and insights on future skills and national skills research, reports and statistics.

“I am excited to bring such inspiring insights and conversations from our first guests, who include Dr Kevin Marshall, the Chair of the National Skills Council and the Head of Future Skilling, Microsoft, and Andrew Brownlee, the Chief Executive Officer of SOLAS; Bernadette Walsh, Guidance Leader and Lecturer in Maynooth University; Dr Michael Shevlin, Professor in Inclusive Education, Trinity College, Dublin, and Patron of the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities; Joanne Morrissey, Construction Skills Leader in SOLAS and Senator Lynn Ruane, with Mags Byrne, Future Skills Team in SOLAS,” says Shauna.

Shauna continues, “The SOLAS Skills and Labour Market Research Unit have been supporting and driving the skills conversation in Ireland through insightful research, reports and information for two decades. Alongside the national skills ecosystem, they work as a collaborative to bring the research, the data and the information that matters on skills to everyone.”

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Recently, Shauna, along with Dr Kevin Marshall and Andrew Brownlee, attended the event with the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science James Lawless TD National Skills Council’s where the inaugural publication Skills Matter: Priorities to Shape Our Future Capabilities was launched. The report includes the Council’s first strategic advice to Government on skills priorities, based on the Council’s work since 2024. More information on the publication can be found here.

Shauna hopes the podcasts will spark a new national conversation that will ultimately make a lasting impact. “These conversations get to the heart of many of the skills matters in Ireland and bring a new and refreshing perspective to both the challenges and the opportunities we have. I hope they will inspire the start of a new national conversation on skills which will inform and shape our national skills ambition.”

For information on SOLAS, visit https://www.solas.ie/

The podcasts can be downloaded via Spotify, Apple and YouTube by searching for Future Skills Ireland.

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