Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

I will pick up on the back-to-education initiative. The Deputy makes a fair point. We are evaluating the initiative at the moment in conjunction with Indecon, which is carrying out an independent evaluation. It is important that we feed in those types of views. We are finding that it is a problem at present with the PUP because there is a massive base of, hopefully short-term, unemployed people who might benefit from reskilling and upskilling. Ensuring that they are eligible for focused, longer-term or maybe even full-time education and training is an issue we need to look at in the context of the back-to-education initiative.

I agree with regard to trying to open up apprenticeships to a much wider base of public sector bodies. There is mention of that in the consultation document in the context of the development of the action plan on apprenticeships. We have worked with different parts of the public sector to try to embed it but I totally agree with the Deputy and we will ramp up our work on that. We will engage with Cork ETB on the painting apprenticeship. There is a real issue with the wet trades. The appeal of a four-year apprenticeship programme in those types of trades seems to have diminished, maybe because they are not as regulated as some of the other areas like electrical apprenticeships, and so painters can almost move into more informal training arrangements for their staff. There is definitely an issue around the wet trades. I will raise it with Cork ETB but we do need to do something, perhaps around the future length of apprenticeships or how we deliver them to try to make inroads into trades like painting and decorating in the future.