Mr. Neil McDonnell:

I agree completely on the apprenticeship issue. In Ireland, we do not have a regard for those physical skills that people learn for technology. This has always astounded me. I was at a talk given some years ago by the former chief executive of Aer Lingus, Christoph Mueller. I never knew that he had started off as a welder in the German army. There is no regard in this country for people who advance themselves by means of their physical knowledge and the knowledge of their hands, yet they can still enter the higher education system via those skills. It will be noticed that in the last point we have made regarding the low hanging fruit, we made reference to not liquidating the National Training Fund. That money has been taken off employers through the national training levy and apprenticeships represent the sort of avenue we should use to spend that money.