Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations.

I certainly agree with Mr. Dermot Carey. It sounds like some sort of nationwide campaign to promote apprenticeships is needed, perhaps on social media or television, and it needs to happen soon. My question for all groups is about what could be done to attract more women to apprenticeships. Mr. Michael Hourihan from Cork Institute of Technology says that there is a need to examine apprenticeship programmes in other countries. Is the German dual programme one that he thinks we should be working towards? What are his thoughts on how career guidance could be improved? What sort of links do the different sectors have with the Institute of Guidance Counsellors? I presume that the cuts to guidance counsellors in 2012 must have had an impact, because there would have been schools which could afford to pay for those hours, and unfortunately the schools which would traditionally have the students that might be attracted to apprenticeships are those that did not have guidance counsellors or could not afford to pay for a guidance counsellor. Did that have an impact in the past five years?

My question for Mr. Des Murphy of Education and Training Boards Ireland, ETBI, is on the two-year pre-apprenticeship programme. How would that work alongside the leaving certificate applied programme? Is it time to totally overhaul that? That was introduced 22 years ago so is that something we need to look at? My final question is whether there are aspects of the education system which negatively affect the perception of apprenticeships, for example, the points system and the league tables. We are all aware of certain schools that might suddenly decide to drop the leaving certificate applied option because they want to be able to attract parents who want to put students into a school that might perform better on the league tables and do not really want the leaving certificate applied programme there. How do we get that shift in cultural mindset that is so badly needed to serve our children better? Rather than serving a league table, surely we should be serving the education of our children better. Do we need to shift the leaving certificate applied option into a proper apprenticeship programme for students?