Inland Fisheries Ireland have been selected as joint winners of the Best Consultancy Partnership gong in the 2020 National Training Awards.
The award was given to IFI and the International Centre for Security Excellence (ICSE) for a QQI Level 6 conflict management course that both worked in collaboration to deliver to most of IFI’s operations staff in late 2018 and 2019.
IFI’s HR chief Roisin Bradley said: “Our operations staff work day and night in the field to protect and manage our fisheries resource. To support our staff to carry out vital work we must ensure they have the correct measures and training to enable them to work in a safe environment.
“This collaborative project between IFI and ICSE has been successful and the feedback from staff has been very positive. We are looking forward and excited to see where this journey takes us.
“I would like to congratulate our health and safety/accessibility officer Michael Cusack; Pia Fennell, our learning and organisational development manager; Sonia Peter, our HR officer; all the staff that helped along the way and the team at ICSE who created and managed the training and the process of rolling it out to staff.
“It is of utmost importance to IFI that staff can carry out the work that is necessary to protect our fisheries resource in the safest way possible.”
Tony O’Brien of ICSE added: “In my view all of the credit for this programme has to go the fisheries officers nationally who made it a success. It was a programme built by fisheries officers for their colleagues and the judges commented on the real desire by the teams to make their job better.
“The programme was successful because of the support, buy in and feedback from fisheries officers nationwide. Their hospitality and willingness to show us the challenges they face and their desire to overcome them set the tone for the whole programme.”
The National Training Awards are organised by the Irish Institute of Training and Development (IITD).