David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will not take the 14 minutes. I support the Minister signing the order. I read through the Labour Court report. As the Minister of State indicated, it seems there was quite a robust debate and discussion but at the end of the day, a good amount of work was done and I welcome the outcome.

I have one question for the officials. I am concerned about the number of apprentices who leave every year. Reference was made to the number of those leaving electrical apprenticeships – 268 in 2016, 369 in 2017, 345 in 2018. Quite a lot of apprentices do not stay. I know orders like this will probably help in some way and that is one of the reasons they are there. Has research been carried out as to why apprentices leave? It may be the case that it is not what they expected when they went in initially but it seems to be a real disruption in young people's lives if they take on a role and then leave, as well as a waste of any training time they encountered. Right across all apprenticeships, more and more go into these roles and then leave for whatever reason and I am anxious to know why this is the case. I guess orders like this will assist.

I am also concerned about bogus self-employment. I put that on the record. I have had discussions with some employers recently who made the point that many of the benefits we are introducing, relating to sick pay for example, could be undermined by bogus self-employment. Some of the very large companies are partaking in this. I agree with the Minister of State and colleagues that we must do more to deal with this issue. That is the question I had on apprentices.