The Minister for Enterprise, Mr Micheál Martin, called for a shake-up of the education system yesterday to ensure the Irish economy remained competitive.
More interaction is needed between educational institutions and the private sector and standards in teaching, curriculum and assessment must be maintained and improved where necessary, he told a conference.
Mr Martin said Irish graduates needed to be recognised as world class if they were to capture the high level investments that the Government wanted to attract.
"We need to ensure that our education system fosters flexibility, adaptability and a general openness to change among young people," he added. "In particular, our education system must support and actively encourage up-skilling and the periodic renewal of skills through life-long learning."
Mr Martin, who is a former Minister for Education, said there was a need to upskill those already in employment to drive productivity in the future.
"Eighty per cent of the workforce of 2020 is already in work and with the expected steady decline in the number of young workers entering the labour market we need to concentrate increasingly on upskilling those already in employment."
Mr Martin was speaking at a conference in Dublin Institute of Technology entitled 'Growing Ireland's Knowledge Economy - Creating 21st Century Engineers'.
