Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

We obviously have considerable respect for the Connect trade union. We work very closely with it on apprenticeship. If that is what its members are hearing and those practices are going on, it is absolutely unacceptable. We make no bones about that. As SOLAS is a government agency, it is really difficult for us to comment on pay and allowance levels because we are not even part of that process. I hope the Deputy understands that I cannot comment on specific arrangements on that.

The Deputy asked about classes. We talked about the progress on the backlog. I appeared before this committee about two or three years ago when the backlog was up at 8,300. We have got it to the position where the number of people who are waiting more than six months to be called for training is down to about 770 at the moment, which shows we have made incredible progress. Like every government agency and Department we have a fixed budget to live within every year, which is not conducive to a demand-led apprenticeship system. However, we are confident that this year we can train as many as we registered last year, thereby maintaining the pipeline of apprentices waiting for training at the same level for phase 2. We want to move all those phase 2 apprentices last year, who had been waiting so long to access training, as fast as we can through phase 4 and phase 6. In a way, the emergency has moved from phase 2 to phase 4 and phase 6. We are still confident we can train as many as we registered last year. There will not be any cancelled classes. We are working on a plan to schedule classes for the remainder of this year and call the apprentices in due course.