Average salary for a civil engineer is £18,000 per annum rising to over £42,000 by the age of 30, according to the Institute of Engineers of Ireland. Website: It's worth keeping an eye on the Institute of Engineers of Ireland's website at www.iei.ie/steps, in order to check details of its upcoming (Schools Technology and Engineering Programme for Skills), which will take place this year in November. This will involve a series of on-site visits to engineering companies throughout the country, including Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Dublin and Galway. Earlier this year, over 500 students visited over 25 engineering companies through the programme.

Colleges: The IEI lists 15 different third-level colleges which offer engineering courses: Athlone IT has two cert courses; Carlow IT has two cert courses; Cork IT has two cert courses; DIT Bolton Street has one degree and one cert course; TCD has one degree course; UCD has one degree course; NUI Galway has two degree courses; Dundalk IT has two cert courses; Galway-Mayo IT has one degree course and three cert courses; Letterkenny IT has two cert courses; Limerick IT has two cert courses; Sligo IT has two cert courses; Tralee IT has two cert courses; Waterford IT has one cert course and UCC has one degree course. Numbers: There are 17,000 engineers registered with the IEI, of which

38 per cent are civil engineers. Some 7 per cent of the total are women.