Mr. Brendan Walsh:

In addition to the shortage of technicians, there is a significant shortage all across Europe and in the western world generally in the uptake of apprenticeships by young people. That is being seen in every country. The result is that there is a significant technician shortage throughout the western world. From the perspective of Applus+, it is a net pull on that pool of technicians because the testing network is not an apprenticeship-type programme. In the case of the 552 active testers we have today, they are not technicians who could be grown within the NCT service; they had to be grown within the wider automotive industry and brought into the service.

Another factor is that within the industry, we see a higher level of retention among car dealerships that put the time and money into keeping an apprentice in play. They try to keep those individuals within their own dealerships because of the investment they have made in them. It is something we need to look into. We have started an investigation as to how we can work with agencies such as SOLAS to create a testing curriculum, which would then allow Applus+ to create its own pipeline of talent that could then serve the needs of the national interest.