Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all of the witnesses to the meeting. Most of the questions have been asked and answered. The big thing that is coming across is the importance of both awareness and the status of doing an apprenticeship as opposed to higher education etc.

All of us in the room were at an event this morning which was a photograph of past and present women Members of the Oireachtas. It is essentially about visual role models, and Ms White talked about the young plumber. Dr. Smyth talked about the fact that there are a lot of women in the new apprenticeships, but we very much need to see them. There is the Generation Apprenticeship campaign around awareness and so on. I am interested in whether the witnesses have any other ideas on how that awareness can be raised because that should be a central point in our report. It came up so much last week and it is coming up so much again this week. Mr. Davitt talked about the importance of awareness for young people and their parents and Dr. Smyth talked about awareness for employers as well, so we need to see this on both sides. My general question is around what we can do in this regard.

The other issue related to that is about status. We talked last week about school league tables, the newspapers that publish league tables and that they say a certain school is the most wonderful school in the world because 100% of students went on to higher education. I spoke to somebody, who was at the committee last week, about the fact that some efforts are being made to get the newspapers concerned to broaden what they measure and to include apprenticeships.

Will IBEC join the campaign to get a broader definition? I am sure it has a powerful influence on the media, etc. This takes in the delegates in their various roles and us as a committee. As long as a school gets a top grade because it sends everyone to college, it will not send anyone to take up an apprenticeship and people may look down on someone who wants to do so. It is a really big barrier in getting parity of esteem. Did Dr. Smyth say entry to colleges connected to the hospitality sector was declining? Perhaps I misunderstood him. Will he clarify the matter as the hospitality sector is across the regions?