Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This gives me the leverage to acknowledge the new apprenticeship model that was launched in Cork in recent weeks with the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, where there were 35 spaces, of which 24 were taken up by Tusla and 12 or 13 were taken up by the HSE. It is the apprenticeship model in social work. First and foremost, it is an opportunity to attract people who might not have been able to afford the opportunity of third level education without the learn and earn apprenticeship model. It also allows for people who would have the lived experience to bring to the table. These people will achieve their goal of the learn and earn apprenticeship piece and achieve their full qualification while being in situ. I must acknowledge the role of Kate Duggan from Tusla, who came to the table saying Tusla was struggling to recruit and attract people and asking if the apprenticeship model be looked at, which Tusla did and stepped forward. The HSE has also come on board, and from a Cork point of view, the ETB and UCC are fully behind it and are playing a pivotal role in the whole design with the tertiary office. I must compliment the Department of further and higher education on what it has achieved here.

There is a lot to be learned from what has been achieved in this apprenticeship model. While professions like to keep their profession as a finite resource, and that is important to say - sometimes when I wonder how numbers are kept tight, it is the profession that keeps the numbers tight - perhaps there is an opportunity here for speech and language, OTs and particularly physios to look at the same earning and learning model, working with the colleges and ensuring the HSE can provide that clinical governance in placement, which would be no different than the social work team in Tusla having to provide the clinical placement. CORU is very excited by this model and is fully on board in ensuring this happens. Being fair to the Department of further and higher education, it has pivoted to the needs of where we are really under pressure as a State and, last year, it went outside of the State to get speech and language opportunities. It would be fantastic to have an earn and learn model apprenticeship approach with proper clinical governance in the State in those three disciplines.