Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

He would deserve one. The sectoral employment order is very welcome. As the Minister of State alluded to, it is not for today but it is probably something that will safeguard the sector in future. The economy is buoyant with regard to opportunities for workers at present and it is very much a workers' market.

I want to discuss a specific point with regard to apprentices. They are probably falling through the cracks at present. Typically those on a four-year apprenticeship are on €250 a week. I will take the specific case of electricians living in rural Ireland. They must attend a college module so invariably they have to have transport. They have to get a car or van to go to and from work. They probably have the added cost of accommodation when they take on the college module. As with many cases, when people come to us in constituency offices with these issues we turn to the Department of Social Protection to look for a one-off supplementary welfare allowance payment. Unfortunately as they earn €250 they are nominally over the threshold for such a payment and nothing can be done for them.

This probably straddles two Departments because it is as much the responsibility of the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Deputy Harris as it is of the Minister of State. Is there an opportunity or capacity to look at an interim cost-of-living measure specifically for apprentices given that it has to be nigh on impossible to operate on €250 a week? A number of people have come to me in recent weeks who are considering dropping out of the apprenticeship and emigrating. This would be a huge disappointment for us. It would also be a loss for us as a nation because we have invested in these people and we want to keep them in the country. It is something that we have to look at in terms of an immediate and short-term fix for apprenticeships.

An increasing number of apprentices are probably exiting specifically for this reason. It is too punitive for them to maintain the apprenticeship. It is coming down to a cost issue. Approximately 20 young apprentices working in a number of sectors have come to me. None of them cites issues with their employers. It is all about the cost of getting to college and the cost of keeping themselves functioning with everything else. I appreciate the cost of diesel and fuel is reducing but suppliers tell us it will increase again towards the winter. This is when this issue will come to a head because this is when most of them will be back in their college modules. I would welcome the thoughts of the Minister of State on this. Is there an opportunity to do something, even if it is a one-off measure, to help those apprentices?