Press Release

Skillnets Press Release

One of the biggest problems facing business today is the rapidly changing demands of the workplace which can make it difficult at times to keep employees skill levels up to date and enable companies to remain competitive. One such national organisation assisting companies in relation to training is Skillnets, a government initiative that offers subsidised training to employees in 2500 companies through 56 networks around Ireland.

Blanchardstown Chamber of Commerce recently secured funding for the developmental phase of the Skillnets network. The Chamber will submit a full application to Skillnets in early September and the network will be known as the Fingal Skillnets Network, as it will represent companies from all over the County of Fingal.  In the network, companies join together to jointly address their training needs, collaborate with each other, with other enterprises and engage experts, trainers, certified bodies and industry bodies to work with them to achieve their goal. As Skillnets will subsidise the cost of training it makes it financially viable for companies, particularly those in the SME sector to avail of quality trainers and training programmes that will meet the networks specific needs.

Skillnets is a programme established in 1999 aimed at facilitating enterprise training and work place learning. Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment funds the project through it’s national training fund. Due to the success of the programme, the department recently approved a new five year programme for Skillnets, and allocated €55 million towards the cost of implementing and expanding that programme.

The network will comprise of SME to multinational sized companies, and will be across all sectors of industry. Supporting partner the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown (ITB) is assisting in the training needs analysis underway at present.

The next step for the programme is an Information Seminar which will be held in July at ITB.  This will involve a survey to identify what training needs can be addressed by Skillnets.

According to Blanchardstown Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Gail Eames “We anticipate that much of the demand for training services will come from the smaller businesses in the county but have received an expressed interest from the multinational companies resident in the area.” 

If you would like to participate in the network or attend the upcoming information seminar, please contact Gail Eames at the Blanchardstown Chamber of Commerce on 01 8209550 or Mairead Murphy at the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown on 01 8851135.