Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

The junior certificate issue of apprenticeships has been dealt with. As the Deputy said, in 2020 there was an agreement that a State certificate or letter would be supplied along with a skill report which would get a person over the previous criteria of having to have 5 Ds in one’s junior certificate to access an apprenticeship. It worked. I got statistics from the apprenticeship team this morning that 25% of our apprentices in 2020 came through that junior certificate route. It worked even if it took longer than we would have wanted to get the system in place. The same conditions apply this year, so I hope the Deputy will not see any of those same issues this year because there will be clarity that that is the approach from the start.

I will ask Dr. Trant speak to the Deputy about the apprenticeship.iewebsite because we launched that in the last few weeks. Hopefully, that will alleviate the issues that the Deputy found there in the past.

On the Deputy’s SME question, that is a very valid point. It is something that the apprenticeship incentivisation scheme for employers tried to deal with. It has given employers a €3,000 payment to take on a young person on an apprenticeship. I want to return to Deputy Ó Ríordáin’s question on youth training and upskilling because we have a great deal to say on that but I will do that later on.

The Deputy is correct in that there is a sense that if one is with the ESB, one gets the €3,000 incentive and if one is an SME, one gets the same incentive. The action plan identified the need for additional SME supports to be provided to try to persuade those businesses about which the Deputy talked to take a chance without too much of a financial hit and to take on that local person they may feel deserves a chance. That is definitely something that we need to focus on. It is a focus in the action plan.

On the question regarding painting and decorating, we followed up with Cork Education and Training Board which I believe was in contact with the Deputy. There is a workshop available and it is just a question of demand at present. The Deputy referred to some evidence of there being demand and of taking people from the UK at a system level but we do not see that demand. My understanding is that there is only one workshop offering a painting and decorating apprenticeship at the moment and that is in Ballyfermot. That is something we continue to monitor and if we can get evidence of that demand, that is certainly something we can look at resurrecting.

I will hand over to Dr. Trant to speak about the new website.