Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have a similar question for the other witnesses and follow-up questions. Before I was elected to this House, I was a lecturer in TUD, but I also taught out in Blanchardstown, which was very apprenticeship-focused. As such, I dealt with a different range of students over the years. How do we make it more attractive for students? I certainly feel that one of the barriers with apprenticeships is that it is just so much easier to fill out your CAO form and list courses from one to five. You have to do to a bit of work to actually get involved in the whole apprenticeship system. The accounting apprenticeships were mentioned. It is possible to either go to college and do accounting or go through the apprenticeship route. An awful lot of people who wanted to be an accountant used to end up in my classes, but that was not the right route for them and they might have been better off taking the apprenticeship path. That is one point. How do we make it more attractive and easier for people to go down the apprenticeship route? I would welcome some insights from a personal perspective.