Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

I apologise that I missed the earlier part of the meeting due to another meeting I was attending. I wish to pick up on two or three points my colleague Deputy Connolly mentioned about the difficulties that face young people who want to be apprentices in getting an employer. I am thinking of the young people from vulnerable homes where there is no history of education or employment. I fear the difficulties and challenges facing that would-be apprentice in small communities. Anything that could be done to ensure he or she is accommodated would be very important.

Deputy Connolly also mentioned healthcare assistants. In my own county, in Cavan Institute, there is a healthcare assistant course run in conjunction with the ETB and some of the private nursing homes. That was launched some years ago and is going well to my knowledge. I am sure it can be expanded, but the institute has pushed it as much as it can and has been successful. Local employers welcome it as well.

With regard to people from the households where there are particular challenges, Youthreach is often not given the credit that it deserves for second-chance education. In my own constituency of Cavan-Monaghan, we have had a very strong Youthreach programme for many years. Our Oireachtas colleague Senator Diarmuid Wilson, was the co-ordinator in County Cavan, and from its early days it has been extremely successful. Does the apprenticeship programme target the graduates of the Youthreach programme? I have seen many of those young people go on to successful careers and further education as well, particularly in Cavan and Monaghan institutes. Some attend Dundalk or Sligo TUs subsequently, and achieve very good careers. These are people whose education career in its early days was very poor and looked very bleak. From that point of view, Youthreach deserves a particular emphasis to ensure those people that leave there go on to useful careers.

I apologise if these issues have been covered, but Deputies Kenny and Connolly mentioned the need for more tradespeople in our local authorities, and Mr. Brownlee referred to the public service in general. Does SOLAS co-ordinate with the County and City Management Association on the needs of all the local authorities throughout the country? Is there an adequate spread of training facilities in all regions?

Traditionally in the past, constituents in my county would have gone to Dundalk or Sligo and they still do. However, we thankfully have some training and apprenticeship facilities locally in our own two counties, there has been a welcome emphasis in recent years on apprenticeships. The numbers have grown and I compliment our witnesses and their organisation for what they have done to try to make apprenticeships more flexible and more attractive, but it goes without saying that we need to achieve a lot more. Is there an apprenticeship element within the proposed new colleges of the future in further education? Are they aligned totally? What co-operation and collaboration exists with training centres and colleges of further education in Northern Ireland?