Dr. Mary-Liz Trant:

As Mr. Brownlee mentioned, there are three apprenticeships in the area, namely, commis chef, chef de partie and sous chef. There were over 203 apprentices in training when the pandemic hit last year. Due to the fact that a lot of the employer's premises were not able to remain open and training centres and institutes of technology were shutting down as well, it was really challenging. The training providers have done a lot of work to move online and to keep the apprentices on board. By and large that has worked and helped. The real focus is to help those apprentices to complete and then, hopefully once the vaccine gets rolled out and the country opens back up again, there is going to be a huge amount of demand and new opportunities in the industry for those apprentices once again. There is no doubt it has been an industry really badly hit. There is an awareness in the industry of the long-term need for a pipeline, through apprenticeship, for example, and the importance of sticking with it. Recruitment is on hold for the moment in 2021 but that is unsurprising. However, we are hopeful that, in supporting the current crop of apprentices to get through, there will be new opportunities as things start to open up and the pipeline will get going again.