To ask the Minister for the Economy whether her Department will reintroduce funding to cover tuition costs of postgraduate study in professional software development.

The Department recently announced 100 Master's Studentships for 2021/22 in key policy areas supportive of the Departmental 10X Vision. Further details, including information on which courses will be included, will be available shortly on the websites of Queen's University and Ulster University.

As part of my plans to increase lifelong learning and support individuals to upskill into priority economic areas, I am introducing a Flexible Skills Fund, which will provide opportunities across the Further and Higher education sectors, at a cost of £5.6m in 2021. It is envisaged that a number of these will be at postgraduate level, and include software development.

This builds on our Covid-19 upskilling programmes in 2020/21, which provided fully funded opportunities at postgraduate level, including 400 in software development, and 300 in related areas including artificial intelligence and data analytics.