Mr. Billy Hann:

This is something that is quite dear to my heart in many ways. I have spoken quite publicly about it. From a retention point of view in Dublin Bus, we are actually very good. We are in or around 7% organisation wide, which is incredibly low for the industry we are in. There is a lot of longevity in the organisation. It is not too unusual to hear of people being 51 years in Dublin Bus, albeit such stories are becoming less frequent in recent times. The number is quite low.

From the point of view of the pipeline of skills, the Deputy heard our issue and concerns around the shortage of mechanics earlier and what we are doing in house to deal with that, which is pretty much boosting our apprenticeship programme. Other people in the organisation and I go out to promote skills, particularly at WorldSkills Ireland events and every other opportunity we get. I have participated in Dublin Bus’s front-line Friday initiative to work with apprentices to see what it is like, what they are doing and everything else. As an industry, we probably need to have a little bit more joined-up thinking with regard to our technological universities at a skills level and how they are funded, what equipment they have to train on and so forth. There is a conversation needed around that, which I am happy to be involved in, as I have said to other Ministers who are involved in this space.

With regard to graduate programmes, we have commenced a graduate programme in our procurement department. We are bringing in graduates and going through the various iterations. It has been very successful. We are now looking to see how we can roll that out to other parts of the organisation.

We facilitate internships, whether they be in our HR or finance department. We are looking to see how we can boost and use them to a larger extent.

The Deputy is absolutely right when it comes to new roles, particularly in and around technology and cybersecurity. We are finding it hard to get the skill set we need at the cost we can pay. We are looking at seeing how we can start to build that skills set up internally within the organisation, while using external resources to help us do that. The further education scheme within the organisation forms part of that. Quite a number of our employees have used the scheme to a great extent within the organisation. That has again been incredibly successful. We have a very progressive way of dealing with all those issues.