Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I very much enjoyed the engagement and I am genuinely enthused by the cross-party, non-partisan nature of trying to make progress on this. I look forward to the committee's recommendations on how we can make progress. The Chair is right that the total number of female apprentices is rising but the total population of apprentices is rising too. I do not have the percentage. I will get it for the Chair but I do not think we are making significant inroads at present. That is why we have announced the female bursary. That is why we have tried to change the CAO website to change the conversation. It is why we are identifying role models and looking at specific initiatives. We will set up an advisory group on this as part of our apprenticeship action plan in order that we can learn from best practice.

I think there are five craft apprenticeship programmes in Ireland without a female apprentice and 11 programmes with five or fewer. That is from my memory but it gives the Chair an indication. We do not have time to get into it today but I want to flag the issue of league tables in schools because this is a real challenge. If we decide as a society that we will measure the success or otherwise of a school based on how it features in a league table that only looks at universities, how will we make progress on apprenticeships culturally? How will we make progress on further education pathways?

It is an issue that comes up with guidance counsellors all the time. I talk to guidance counsellors regularly. Work needs to be done in terms of a joined-up national guidance counselling policy that transcends a number of Departments. I am advocating for and working on that at present. It is not that the league tables are published by the State but that is what is published in newspapers. It is not a criticism of newspapers. They will say they cannot get data for other things. It is a legitimate issue to look at.

We have a new national apprenticeship office. We are very much looking at getting into schools. I am going in but it is much more important to get female role models into schools. We did not talk enough today about the reverse that the Chair rightly brought up in terms of the professions where we are looking to get more men in, especially the caring professions. Trying to bring role models in through the national apprenticeship office will be a new departure. I am very happy to get the Chair any data on this as well.