Mr. Sean Aylward:

We have taken a careful note of everything that the members have said. My response will not be comprehensive but I will do my best. I will first touch on the role of the chairperson vis-à-visthe chief executive. I have served as CEO to a board in a number of capacities. I am clear in my own mind that it is up to the board and its chairperson to steer and provide direction and a bit of strategic vision, scanning the horizon, and for the executive and the CEO to do the rowing. That is not to say that the roles are not equally challenging but it is important that we do not blur them, nor would I want to. That probably means the committee will see much more of the CEO than me. However, I hope members are assured that I am prepared to give this all the time that it will take. I will try to be strategic in my input to the board and in dialogue with the executives who serve it.

I will try to draw together some of the points raised by members. I spent nine years of my life working with prisoners. From the perspective of a civil servant, some were very high risk. At one point I was making decisions every day on what prisoner to release in what was a revolving door situation. It was a terrifying situation but I took a chance many times, as did my colleagues before and since, on prisoners who we felt had a chance and an offer of a start. No matter how damaged or how risky the proposition, if there was a chance of a start in life, either a place in a school, college or tech, or just working with somebody, we took that risk on behalf of Ireland Inc. and we were let down very few times. It is worth taking a chance on people. I was delighted when I came to SOLAS to discover that it already supports initiatives with prisoners, long before my advent. It has forged a particular link with one of our most challenged prison institutions, Mountjoy, where it has held TEDx talks and a choir with the prisoners. It is very interesting to see the people at HQ level making that symbolic involvement. There are impediments to people who have a criminal record getting jobs in civvy street. It is tough and every society wrestles with it. I do not want to anticipate the ongoing consideration on that box-tick issue, that people have to tick a box on a form if they have a criminal record which tends to knock them out of the park even if it was only a modest infraction. People are very scared of others with certain predilections but as a society there has to be room for redemption, they must be allowed to move on where ever it is possible and safe to do so. I would like to see more done on my watch on this.

On apprenticeships generally, the employer is the elephant in the room. Employers must be sold on the idea of hiring, paying and investing in a young person as their apprentice. In a recession, risks like that tended to be ducked or avoided. Now as skills shortages emerge, there may be technically full employment, or close to it, but there are still huge skill shortages. Employers are waking up and smelling the coffee, realising that this is a good strategy. More and more are buying into apprenticeships. The Apprenticeship Council, led by the current CEO of the ESB, clearly is an important actor. I will sit down with that chairperson. The dialogue between the Apprenticeship Council and SOLAS is already well developed and cordial. Things can be done there. We have to work on it. We need more stellar examples such as those who came before the committee some weeks ago from the skills competition. They are the hope for the future. They have as much to offer as the people in prestigious college PhD programmes. They will make a great difference in the future and will help to build a new Ireland.

We are taking a pilot approach on some of the schemes. The short course whereby people qualify themselves as professional drivers is a 29-week course. It is not formally an apprenticeship. The way that employers have embraced it is very heartening. There are more programmes like that in the pipeline.

Deputy Jan O'Sullivan mentioned the need for flexibility by an ageing workforce in order to hold on to their jobs and careers. An upskills programme is under way all around the country. Employers can see that their workforces will be challenged in the future and are engaging with it.That is a good programme and I would like to see more of it. It shows that at any age, one can learn and progress and that both employers and the ETBs and SOLAS are embracing this.

I have looked at the record, and I know that Deputy Thomas Byrne has often spoken of the social status and esteem in which apprenticeships are or are not held. Parity of esteem, as I believe the Chairman has put it, is needed. I would like to see an Ireland where the same gathering is around the CAO form as people look at options for apprenticeships. Perhaps the CAO form should be given a few more pages and we could level out the landscape. I know that is an independently managed structure but I would love to live in an Ireland where people and the recognised flagships in the system gave equal value to apprenticeship and traineeship opportunities. We need to broaden this out. Were the pages outlining how to apply for an apprenticeship on the same website, it might have a psychological effect.

The penny might drop and we might see more middle class participation.

In the context of the capital programme in this area, there were years of recession - to quote the Bible, the years the locusts ate - but money has started to come back into the system. The Department of Education and Skills controls that capital budget. I would like to see an evolution whereby more responsibility for that capital budget might be vested in SOLAS. We have to earn that trust but I think it is the way to go, and it would be coherent and congruent with the other side of our funding operation. Clearly, a case has to be made to the Department. While I do not want to sour the view of anyone in Marlborough Street too soon, I would say to them and to anybody else that there is a logic to bringing the two together and putting in more money. However, I am not making any promises to the Deputy about Dunboyne as that is a process above my pay grade. I feel the State has to reflect within its investment in the sector a parity of esteem for this important technical branch of education.

I was intrigued about the reference to Oireachtas apprenticeships. I was thinking back to my very early days as a civil servant, carrying Jack Lynch's bag into a meeting in Strasbourg and other little moments.