Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this motion today. I thank Fianna Fáil for putting forward this motion of great importance.

No doubt there is a lack of young people taking up apprenticeships. The recent Construction Industry Federation report, Trades and Apprenticeships Skills Survey, identifies the lack of skilled tradespeople and apprenticeships as small firms struggle to take on apprentices. In this report, they state that this is a clear warning sign for the Government and for the construction sector.

In a recent newspaper article in west Cork, Mr. John Whelton of Whelton Construction in Clonakilty stated, "There is a lack of people taking up apprenticeships and this is having a major knock-on within the building industry." John also suggested:

There needs to be a programme of incentives in the Budget to support the promotion of apprenticeships across all the trades. There is an upturn in construction but we have to support employers and apprentices to ensure that we can face the challenges ahead. We also need help within the planning process and a scheme to keep material costs from sky-rocketing so that we can build the homes that people need in West Cork.

I could not agree more with John's comments.

We know only too well that housing supply levels remain way below what is required. The problem here is not money. Budget 2019 is supposed to have thrown a lot more money at the crisis. The problem is in breaking through the layers of bureaucracy and delay and translating funding allocations into actual building.

If the Government wants to see more people taking up trades, it will have to give better support to young people. Eoghan Ó Murchadha, the assistant head of the department of craft, design and construction and a full-time teacher of carpentry and joinery in Dún Laoghaire Further Education Institute, has warned that we are experiencing a skills gap, it can be dealt with, there are recommendations and we do not want this to develop into a skills loss.

The Government needs to take action now. We have seen a similar situation in Britain where they are still trying to recover their apprenticeship model a generation later. This is a warning for the future of construction in Ireland. A skills loss is a crisis waiting to happen, and if it does happen, we will see trades' rates and prices increase, with the consumer taking the hit.

A significant concern that needs to be addressed is that contractors feel that the legislative and Government requirements around apprenticeships are burdensome and putting them under pressure. The Government needs to tackle this crisis now and not wait for the problem to escalate further.

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