Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have two comments on the apprenticeships. I agree with everything that has been said. Currently, we have a backlog of approximately 10,000 apprentices waiting to do their apprenticeships. These apprenticeships, which should last four years, are lasting five or six years. We also need to deal with this in real time. That is certainly not helping the situation.

On PLC courses, I understand that approximately 4% of people who do the nursing PLC can then go on to actually take up nursing. That is also a real problem. There are too many very simple blocks that need to be taken away and for which somebody needs to take responsibility. We can be forever and a day talking about the future and the big broader pictures but if we do not remove these blocks, people are still going to find themselves in a situation where there are no defined pathways. We have spoken about this matter at this committee and at the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. We have brilliant oncology nurses but why do these nurses not go on to become consultants?

There are blocks there that need to be addressed. The pathways are not clearly defined. Sometimes we take up a few good examples and then think this is okay. We are losing out on the direction of travel we need to be going in with the wider population. That feeds into the excellent Science Foundation Ireland programmes. How do we mainstream those programmes? I feel a lot of money is, I will not say wasted, but we are not maximising the investment we make in those programmes by not mainstreaming them and, indeed, in some cases we are embedding inequalities in them where they are so closely defined in geographical areas. How will we mainstream them and what are the blocks to doing this at present?

We have some really talented young autistic men and women across the State and we are not investing in them in the way we should. They range from really creative people to those who are excellent at coding and programming, but we are losing a lot of this potential because we are not giving them the opportunities to excel to their full ability. I will confine myself to those two questions to allow for in-depth answers.