Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Farrell for his questions. I will begin by picking up on his last point. We must reform the CAO process. In saying that, I mean no disrespect to a body which does a very good job. It does not fall under the remit of my Department. It is unfair to young people that we narrow the conversation about their educational choices at such a young age. Those young people often only get to see the other choices available to them if they do not get the points required for a certain college course.

Far too often, the culture of conversations about the future of young people in Ireland focuses on what institutions they will be going to and not on they want to do with their life and the four or five ways of achieving that ambition. An apprenticeship is not a lesser way of studying; it is just a different way of studying. Doing a post-leaving certificate, PLC, course and then moving from that to UCD is not a lesser way of studying; it is just a different way of studying. I will come back to the committee on this issue shortly, but the Minister of State and I are working on plans to reform the process for school leavers. I think we can do something exciting in this space during the life of this Oireachtas and I am eager to work with people on this issue.

I am confident that we can provide extra college places this year. We have already allocated funding from the budget for approximately 2,000 extra places. We have set up a working group to see if we can do more. I reiterate that every year some students do not get their first choice and instead get their second or subsequent choice. This year, I am trying to maintain the ratios, so that at least on average a student will have as much of a chance as they would have had last year or in previous years.

The Minister of State and I are working hard on the matter of apprenticeships. The apprenticeship action plan will go before the Cabinet in March. It focuses on several areas, including what we can do to incentivise and support employers, what we can do to streamline the bureaucracy and procedures in place and what we can do to bring more apprenticeships on stream. Craft apprenticeships are important, but so are apprenticeships in a wider range of areas. We are also looking at what we can do to encourage gender diversity and inclusion.

I met the 1,000th female apprentice to be registered in Ireland, Zoe Fitzgerald, some weeks ago. I was delighted to meet her because she is a brilliant young woman embarking on an exciting career. The briefing note I got on that occasion stated that we had 26 female apprentices in 2015. I genuinely thought it was a typographical error. I thought at least one zero was missing, but the figure was correct. The number has now reached 1,000, but we have more work to do in this area.

We also need to invest more in the physical infrastructure in the area of further education and training, as the Deputy said. He has some exciting thoughts in that regard for the Fingal area.

When Covid allows us to move around, I will be happy to come out and visit the Deputy's constituency and see what we can do in that regard. We have put a lot of funding into providing extra training places to try to prepare for a life post Covid. There will be a life post Covid when people get back on their feet, but that does require infrastructure. We have seen significant increases in our capital budget and we are ambitious to put that money to good work.