Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the proposal to bring in the responsible bodies because in Cork University Hospital, CUH, where staff are charged extortionate money for parking, they now want to use the car park for an extension that will leave staff with nowhere to park. They will have to move away from CUH and probably will go across to the private car park. We are going backwards. I sat on the autism committee and we had a summer provision Bill, which hopefully will emerge.

We wanted to include all trainees who would be volunteers for the summer provision, for three, six, nine or however many weeks it was, to work with children with autism and they would be accredited X number of hours for that as part of their training regardless of whether they were going to be electricians, welders or doctors. Again, it was trying to push people into these professions and retain them.

As has been said, some of this gang are doing apprenticeships and then there is a break and they do not get a brown penny. People are told they will not get paid for this but at least it will be another 12 weeks less when they go back to complete their apprenticeship, so it is a win-win situation. That is about it. It is very interesting.