John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will address apprenticeships first. In general, we were coming from a poor place with apprenticeships. I will start with construction, which has been mentioned. Those would have been known as the basic apprenticeships. That is not to degrade the job itself but the basic apprenticeships at the time were bricklaying, cabinet-making, carpentry, plastering and so on. In the boom, we found that many employers, in the rush to build hotels, houses and so on, really did not take on the apprentices that would have been taken on in the 1950s, 1960s and so on and did not implement the same measures to address the need for apprenticeships. One would often see bricklayers or carpenters being bussed or flown in from other countries. There is nothing wrong with it and I am not arguing with it. I am delighted that people can come to work in Ireland. It did some damage to apprenticeships.

I am looking at some of the figures I have here on brick and stonelaying, plumbing, stone masonry and so on. There has been an increase. I do not know what the figure was in 2015 or 2014 - I can find it - but we have gone from 4,172 to 5,256 in 2017. Much of that relates to collaboration with employers, companies and so on, and exploring the necessity of having apprenticeships and pushing forward. Deputy McLoughlin mentioned commis chef positions. There are indications that we will need 8,000 chefs if the economy keeps growing as it is expected to grow over the next number of years. There are complications in chef training. We all know about them. I have met some young commis chefs who do not like the job and find the long hours prohibitive along with the money not being great. It is not everybody's forte to cook so that is a difficulty that we have and there is no question about it. We are looking into that.

The Deputy mentioned skills. We have a new skills package that will respond to the national skills shortages. The priority needs will be identified by the employer. We have what we call the national skills fora, which operate around the country and engage, consult and collaborate with employers about the skills that are necessary in particular areas. That has been quite successful. I mentioned earlier that we would have had very few apprenticeships in the financial sector. We moved from zero to 27 to 207 this year. That would have included toolmaking, polymer processing, technology, pipefitting, metal fabrication, manufacturing engineering and so on. In the financial sector, there are accountancy technicians, insurance practitioners and so on and we have found it to be quite successful because of the introduction of new apprenticeships. There is a slow uptake of the new type of apprenticeships but we think that the signs for them are good, looking at what has been achieved over the last years. We hope that Springboard will be part of that. We all know how Springboard operates and we hope for Springboard to have an additional 1,000 places in it in 2018. The signs for apprenticeships are good and I have just received the overall total. Overall, we had 10,185 apprenticeships in 2016. We are now up to 12,406 in 2017. It is not a huge increase but it is significant. I have before me data on all the different apprenticeships in electrical work, engineering, printing paper, motor trades, hospitality and so on. Perhaps the Deputies might look at the information. I think it would be interesting. Overall, apprenticeships are dramatically on the increase, coming from the very bad place we were at. Could one say that is a dramatic increase? It was 2,500 from 2016 to 2017. It is not bad.