Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I echo Deputy Ó Ríordáin's sentiments regarding the establishment of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. It has given a focus, particularly on apprenticeships, that was not there heretofore. We are heading into a phase in which the Government will be rolling out the largest retrofitting scheme in the history of the State, which will involve construction, retrofitting of houses, installation of insulation and so on. It is important to acknowledge the crucial role apprentices will play in that in the near future. I am as guilty as anybody else of assuming that when we talk about apprentices, we are referring to plumbers, electricians and other traditional trade and craft apprentices. However, there is much more to apprenticeships than that. There are apprenticeships in accounting, business-related courses and so on.

Having spent 15 years teaching in a vocational school, I would like to see a greater emphasis on engaging with students at second level and encouraging them as best we can at least to consider an apprenticeship for their further education. This is something the Minister of State and his Department might look into facilitating. It is important to acknowledge that apprenticeships are a type of third level education. We frequently see them dismissed as something that can be done in the event that people miss out on some other type of course or job on which they might have had their sights set. Apprenticeships are far more than that and we must emphasise this point, particularly at second level. The days are gone, and long may it continue, when there was a snobbery around apprenticeships as being for people who did not make the cut.

We need to acknowledge what the Government has done so far in this area. A total of €34 million was invested under last year's budget to develop new apprenticeship programmes. Eight such programmes were launched in 2020 and 2021. That said, I would like to see greater emphasis on apprenticeships in the areas of online safety, cybersecurity and other aspects of the IT sector. Given the prevalence of cyberterrorism and online scams to which people are falling victim, this is an area in which we really need to engage in promotion in order to encourage growth and participation.

There is an issue around gender imbalance within the apprenticeship model. The president of Munster Technological University, MTU, openly acknowledged at a recent appearance before the education committee that the university is really struggling to get women into traditional apprenticeships. It is an ongoing issue. I understand that out of the current apprentice population of 24,000 nationally, only 1,500 are female. There clearly is work to be done and ground to be made up in this regard. I acknowledge that the Government has made funding available for female participation, including a grant of more than €2,500 to encourage employers to take on women, particularly in trades that are mostly dominated by men. That is welcome.

We need to consider the issue of capacity when we talk about getting greater numbers of apprentices into the system. There is a difficulty locally, as we heard at the education committee from representatives of various technological universities in recent months. I can speak particularly about MTU in Cork, where programmes have been oversubscribed over the years. There was an effort to accommodate too many people in an outdated building on a fairly restricted site. We need to get the right investment in capital infrastructure to ensure we can take on the volume of apprentices we are saying is needed.

The provision under the national training fund, NTF, is relevant when we are talking about the future of funding for higher education. Serious consideration must be given to how we will meet the shortfall over the next few years, which I understand is approximately €300 million. Will the Minister of State address whether employers are likely to see some kind of increase in their levy to the NTF into the future?

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