Sir, – The higher the level of skills that an unemployed graduate has, the more difficult, slow and expensive to upskill, as the training required is, of necessity, more specialised. An alterative which would promote innovation and provide a wide spread of appropriate skills, would be to allow such graduates form “innovation co-ops” – where graduates of different skills (for example an accountant, an engineer and an IT person) would form groups. They could then work on a practical problem identified by an Irish company.
In this way graduates could learn skills they would not otherwise encounter, and the result could be of commercial value. The costs would be minimal as the people themselves would be providing the organisation and the training. As an example, software could be developed to match the actual location of street furniture on Google Street View against what is recorded on local authority records – such software would then have a commercial use in every country where Google Street View was available. – Yours, etc,