Ms Maria Joyce:

May I comment on apprenticeships? Across the board in the context of higher education and apprenticeships, it is important to set ambitious targets and put in place measures underneath them to ensure it is not just about mainstreaming. There is a need to ensure targeted provision to get to the mainstreaming levels we need to be at. Apprenticeships are another important route for young Travellers to access skills, trades and professions. It is important that they be viewed from the perspective of gender and that they include Travellers in their design. Participating bodies and businesses must be compliant with their public sector duty and there should be anti-racism training. The State carried out some work in recent years on apprenticeships with a view to making them less gendered. The question was how to get more women into traditional apprenticeships, which were male dominated. When the State views anything in the context of gender, it has to view it through an equality lens to ensure that women from ethnic minorities, the most marginalised groups of women, can access these programmes-----