The Government of Ireland created this strategic plan to meet the skills needs of businesses and to ensure Ireland’s success in a rapidly-changing economic environment with rapidly-increasing needs for workers with high-level skills that contribute to a competitive, innovation-driven, knowledge-based, participative and inclusive economy; and based on the forecast that Ireland would need 950,000 extra new workers between 2006-2020. In order to achieve that vision, the Expert Group identified a set of objectives to assist the Government of Ireland in developing a National Skills Strategy and to make informed policy decisions based on the increasing economic demand for workers with high-level skills. These objectives include achieving a significantly improved educational profile for the labour force, upskilling 500,000 people in employment, increasing the participation rate in upper secondary education to 90% and ensuring the progression rate to third-level increases to 72%.The strategic plan was developed to meet the significant challenges in meeting these objectives and in meeting the requirement for an integrated all-of-government approach led by Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment and the Department of Education & Science