Mr. Brian Nolan:

It will vary from employment to employment. There will be arguments. There always is, even when talking about pay in general. There are employers that will plead inability to pay. That is a fact of life. Some will pay more than others and so forth. If you look at where the greatest cohort of craft apprentices is, because I know the consortium might be slightly different in different types of employment, approximately 11,000 or 12,000 of those apprentices are electrical. Not all of those are in electrical contracting but a cohort is. Most of the plumbers and pipefitters are in contracting. Construction would be in construction. In those instances, we have secured at least a commitment from the employers to engage in a potential renegotiation of apprenticeship rates of pay. We are looking at the dynamic about the four years of apprenticeship and how we can bring them up and potentially slow down the speed at which the higher rates move. That is a potential trade-off. Yes, it will come at a cost. There is no doubt about that, but it might not come at as big a cost by rebalancing the pay over the four years, if that makes sense.

We are open to exploring all those things with employers. That is what we do best as trade unions, but we do not see it as it will be as easy just to pay up.

The concern on the consortium end of it is potentially some of the professions that would be considered for a consortium-led apprenticeship are employments that, at best, pay minimum wage. You are talking about a situation where you are creating an apprenticeship to attain minimum wage. There is something inherently wrong with that by design. Those are the two concerns.

I get what the Deputy is saying. We do not deny the fact we are effectively saying that wages should increase - there is no doubt about that - but we are saying it is for the right reason of apprenticeship and promotion, sustainability and, for example, addressing housing.