Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree very much with Deputy Collins’s analysis. The answer to her first question is that these are programmes we want to start funding from next September. What we are trying to do is effectively set up three-year pilots and then at the end be able to evaluate what worked, what did not work and what could be improved. That is the timeline.

On the second point, Deputy Collins has reminded me that one of the things I intend to insert in the criteria of consideration of the products we fund is opportunities after people complete the programme. I am conscious that the committee heard from Trinity. I see Hugo MacNeill in the Public Gallery. One of the successes of the Trinity programme is the employment piece at the end. We must do a lot more on education, but we also have to do a lot more in employment. Education is good in and of itself, but what appeals to me is where we see a programme in place that has an employment opportunity at the end and partnership with industry, that could be very good. That is something I would like to build in.

Deputy Collins is 100% right about therapists. I have a little bit of good news for her on this. In September 2022 we reached an agreement with the Department of Health on workforce planning for doctors for medicine. We agreed to increase the number of medicine places through the CAO by 200 over the coming years. We provided 60 in September and another 60 are due to be provided next September. We have now agreed with the Department and with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to do the same on therapy posts. That is absolutely vital. I am very much aware that there are issues with retention, but there are also issues to do with training enough people, which we are not doing currently. It is easy to create college places in some areas, but where a clinical placement is required, it does require my Department to do its bit in getting the universities to provide the place. It also then requires the HSE to provide the clinical placement. That is why we have to work across Departments. What I am saying this afternoon is that it is my intention that we would bring forward proposals on workforce planning for the therapies in advance of the next college year. Without pre-empting that work, I imagine that it will be a bit similar to medicine and that we will try to build on the process each September and take a multi-annual approach. We should build on the success of the medicine programme we worked on together.

On apprenticeships, the intention is to increase the number of people with a disability working in the public service between now and 2024. Those figures are clear. The beauty of the apprenticeships is that we get the public sector to take on more apprentices - we have a target of 750 public sector apprentices a year by 2025 - that gives us a great opportunity in terms of access and inclusion to make sure that we in the public service are doing our bit to make sure students with disabilities and autistic students are getting onto those apprenticeship programmes too. We will be setting up an access to apprenticeship committee next month and there will be an opportunity to delve into how we can use apprenticeships to help people with a disability get a start in the workplace. The public service must be a leader in this and not just lecture others to do stuff.