Ms Tara Coogan:

I am not aware of whether any detailed research has been carried out as to why people leave apprenticeships but I would be very surprised if there has not been research into it. However, in the construction sector it appears to be the case, anecdotally, that sometimes it is due to the lure of the salaries for unskilled workers. Having been an apprentice for a few years, you can then become a general operative. The few euro extra in the pay packet can sometimes be the reason people decide to leave programmes like apprenticeships. These are issues that need to be considered but they are outside my specific remit.

The reality of a sectoral employment order and one of the policy intentions is to demonstrate that if you acquire a skill and you become a craftsperson or a skilled electrician that you have a very valuable profession that has a guaranteed minimum income that will never be below whatever it is and the market can dictate it is much higher. I hope this will go some way, but I suspect there are further issues that need to be examined in that particular space.

Bogus self-employment is not something new or that the Department is not aware of. It is certainly not something that we are not taking seriously. I recently had an interdepartmental meeting with my colleagues in Revenue and in the Department of Social Protection. There are three different regulatory regimes, so the issue is decided in different contexts in different ways. We are looking into this particular issue. One of the things that occurs to me, which is merely a suggestion, is that there is a need to promote sectoral employment orders to make sure that people are aware of the benefits.

Whether it is bogus self-employment or whatever, sometimes people may think that being a self-employed person is more attractive scenario but they do not realise the totality of it, such as the benefits of a pension and so on and so forth. There is a lot of educational work that could be done in this particular area. I hope that going forward, this is an area where unions and employer bodies will work jointly. There should be some efforts in that area. However, that is just an opinion of mine.