Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody for coming in. I reiterate the congratulations that everyone here has expressed to the participants for their participation, their representing the country and their achievements at the world games in becoming world leaders in their particular fields, and that is the way they have to look at it. Part of their being here is recognition for that. The Minister quite rightly criticised some of the media here, who shall remain nameless, for not giving the games the recognition it merited. It is important we give it that recognition. I note that 45 million people saw the participants on Russian television. It is up to us as public representatives to do our best to promote this because it is certainly one of the few world championships on this scale - and it is a huge scale - that has a lower profile here, which is a problem. If the media are listening - there is always someone listening - I urge them to show this hearing rather than us. We get on the telly all the time, and we hope to put the participants on the telly to show the achievements they have made. That is really important. They have represented the country at the highest possible level in their chosen fields.

I do not expect them to answer questions but I have a couple. They have all come to apprenticeships. Do any of them have any ideas or suggestions as to how we can promote apprenticeships and skills at school? Perhaps some of them had a good intervention, a good guidance counsellor, a good teacher, a good ETB person - whatever.

Does anyone have suggestions on that? What can be done to encourage more women to become involved? The apprenticeship field is the outstanding example of underrepresentation of women in Irish society. The number of women is crazily low. I would like to ask Ms Yeates in particular what brought her to her category of apprenticeship, which is relatively unusual. How did that happen?