Mr. Robert Morton:

I completely agree with the Deputy. I was aghast at that when I started in 2021 but then I looked deeper into the issues.

As the Deputy knows, those going to university apply through the CAO system but that does not mean to say that they are work-ready or employable. Obviously, when someone comes to the NAS for an internship, he or she must be employable. In other words, public sector employment standards apply, including the need for Garda clearance, employer references, occupational fitness tests and so on. What we found was that many, if not all, of the students who applied for an internship were not passing the competency requirements to actually do the job. We have worked very closely with our colleagues in UL and provided them with a lot of constructive feedback and they have re-engineered the programme on the basis of that feedback. We worked very closely with them in the latter part of 2021 and last year, we started to see graduates from UL joining the NAS for internships. We expect to see a lot more of that this year. We are working towards a target of September this year to get almost all of the graduates from UL to come into the NAS on a graduate internship basis. It is something that we recognised as a problem and we have been working very closely with UL to resolve because it is part of our future workforce strategy. We will never be able to train enough people. We have to be able to recruit apprentices but we also have to be able to attract people through the university sector as well.