James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I invite Deputy Crowe to send me a note on this and I will pick it up with him offline. I am not familiar with what is involved. It is not part of the Supplementary Estimate, but I am quite happy to engage with him on it. It is a new one on me and my officials. We will have to find out more about it and drill into it a little bit to see what the situation is there. QQI has a degree of autonomy and it can regulate its own courses. Perhaps it has discovered an issue. I do not know why it might be doing this. There may be a good reason for it. I will have a look at the matter and come back to Deputy Crowe on it. He might send me a note containing the details of what is involved.

In terms of the mid-west and aviation provision, Deputy Crowe is probably aware that I was pleased to be able to double the number of apprenticeships in aviation mechanics shortly after starting in this role. There was an issue, because we were not, perhaps, as competitive as we should have been in terms of supporting the aviation industry and having fleets maintained in Ireland. In response to this, I doubled the number of apprenticeships available in Dublin and Shannon. Block 2 of this will either be starting in Shannon very soon or is ready to commence. This is a significant investment in aviation in the mid-west region. I will send Deputy Crowe the details of what is involved if he does not have them already. I can send him a note on the matter. It is a significant investment in the region.