Ms Meadhbh Costello:

On the question about advertising apprenticeships, this is an area where the national apprenticeship office and the action plan for apprenticeship has been very successful. There have been national campaigns and a number of events that really have done a lot of work promoting apprenticeships. The challenge is a cultural mindset change. It is not going to switch overnight; it is something we have to keep plugging away at to have the type of cultural change. Two areas where we could see further action, as we mentioned earlier, are the opportunity for students at an earlier level engaging in vocational education and apprenticeship programmes as part of second level curricula and better resourcing of career guidance at second level. Currently, resourcing for guidance counsellors is very strained. A lot of times they are the first response when it comes to mental health crises in school. It is very appropriate that resources would be diverted to students and children who are in need, but it does sometimes mean career guidance counselling is not always the focus. We need to make sure there is enough resourcing in schools to deal with mental health concerns and to expand opportunities for career guidance for different students as well.