Mr. Paul Jackman:

I thank the Deputy for the questions. Currently, we anticipate a deficit of between 3,000 and 4,000 truck drivers in Ireland. EU-wide, it is between 250,000 and 300,000 and that figure is anticipated to grow to 550,000 by the end of the decade. The main reason is the demographics of the driver population, to which the Cathaoirleach just alluded. If we look at the figures for the driving population that is under 25, no matter what country we look at, we see that it is between 2% and 5%. Our young people are not engaging with the industry and that is reflected across a lot of sectors in Ireland and across the EU.

On the ETBs, we had the traineeship programme, which is a minimum of six months, in seven ETBs but it is only in four now. They have pulled back primarily because of the RSA. Currently, there is a funding issue but the primary reason was that the ETBs could not complete the logistics of the course because they needed training blocs of drivers and the RSA failed to deliver, in spite of us having meetings with SOLAS and the RSA and getting a commitment on that. The traineeship programme involved getting the rigid vehicle licence and then stepping up to the articulated vehicle licence. The whole traineeship became disconnected. One driver got a test locally no problem, another had to go to Athlone from Cavan to get a test, another had to go to Kilkenny and so on. It just became chaotic so they were unable to deliver the courses.