Mr. Gerard Brady:

IBEC runs a number of apprenticeships. These are not the craft apprenticeships, but the newer ones out across our trade associations. It is critical they get funding, and funding that is adequate for the year. We have seen some further education providers on the public side run out of money midway through this year and have had to cut back on provision. This has been happening across the country. Ensuring, then, that people have adequate provision is one aspect.

More generally, I think reform is happening in apprenticeships to bring together the newer forms of apprenticeships and the traditional craft apprenticeships. The biggest challenge in take-up is ensuring employers have adequate funding for the time employees are going to miss so they are able to backfill for those roles. The challenge we see in our area is in the SME sector in particular. If a company only has a handful of staff, a backfill could account for 20% of staff. This is a real challenge for some of those companies. If we want more companies to take on apprentices, then we will have to fund them better in terms of the backfill, particularly for smaller companies.