Dr. Vivienne Patterson:

I thank the Senator for the question. It is a challenging sector. We have three active apprenticeships in that area at the minute. One is commis chef, which is run through the education and training providers. That is a successful course. Hundreds of people have come through that apprenticeship. Numerous employers have signed up for commis chef. Our difficulty is the movement between commis chef to chef de partie and sous chef. We have been working with the Restaurants Association of Ireland, RAI, which is the lead in the consortia for the chef de partie and sous chef. We have provided funding for it to have a project manager and a communications person to work with it to try to promote it and get employers. However, we are not seeing a huge take up. We are not getting that movement between commis chef and chef de partie.