James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Okay. The SOLAS issues. My Department gave SOLAS an increase last year of €41 million across the board. Some ETBs are experiencing funding difficulties. One of the reasons for that is because apprentices took longer to exit phase 2 than they should have. There was a backlog in the system last year and the year before. This meant that ETBs underestimated the cost of having those apprentices on their books because the apprentices have a training rate of pay which is associated not necessarily with the stage of progression but how long they have been in the system. If the apprentices are in the system for longer than they should have been because backlogs that arose last year and the year before, they are then getting higher rates of pay, which means the overall funding pressures are greater. That was brought to my attention in the past couple weeks. I immediately wrote to SOLAS. The first directive I gave it was that no apprenticeship courses should be cancelled anywhere and that they have to be ring-fenced and supported. I am engaging with the Department of public expenditure to find additional resources for that, and I have also had some conversations with SOLAS as to how it might manage that in the short term. I will also speak to the board of SOLAS tomorrow. I am intensely engaged on that issue and very aware of it. I think we will have a resolution quite soon on that, which, let us be honest, should not have arisen in the first place. It should not have happened. However, since it has been raised with me, I am taking steps to manage it and proactively address it.