Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

We have done quite a lot. I have one colleague, Mr. Tony Donohoe, who is on the National Apprenticeship Council. He devotes a lot of his working life to promoting apprenticeships, so we are passionate about making them succeed. I would be keen to work with any member on any suggestions and ideas they may have.

At the most practical level, there are two streams to what we are doing. First, we have over 40 trade associations within IBEC. We have encouraged all of them to be business-led in identifying the demand for apprenticeships. A number of those have put bids in for the new apprenticeship programmes. They are coming from trade associations that are part of IBEC. Thankfully, many of those have already been successful in round 1. Hopefully, we will see more of them being successful in the subsequent round of the apprenticeship programme.

Second, we have a responsibility to promote the relevance of apprenticeships to the business community, and we do that on an ongoing basis. We do numerous events, including on the skills agenda. We see labour shortages continuously coming up as a big issue for business. We are continuously reminding our HR community, CEOs and other business decision-makers that they need to do more as individual businesses to support the success of apprenticeships.

We are beginning to see that culture change. It is going to be a long battle and we have been coming up against some challenges along the way, but I think we are making progress. IBEC will not be found wanting in lending its support in practical ways to ensure that new bids are coming through from industry groups for new apprenticeships where business needs them. We will encourage as many businesses as possible to get involved by supporting new apprenticeship programmes and taking apprentices into their businesses. That is IBEC's responsibility and we are doing it.

I might take the opportunity to catch up with the Deputy bilaterally and share some of the work that we have been doing. We have been very involved in this space.