Ms Patricia King:

I was surprised that the process was so complex. As the Deputy will know, if a national apprenticeship is offered, the skills level must be thorough. Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, must underpin everything, and rightly so. If somebody claims they have been through an apprenticeship as an electrician or commis chef, we want them to be a fully qualified electrician or commis chef. The process is more complex than anybody on the council envisaged. A lot of hard work is going on in a variety of areas. The council put out a call for apprenticeships and received responses from employer groups which were prepared to sponsor. Some of those were oven ready, so to speak, some needed more work and some were way off. There are three lots. The council is making another call because some key groups did not come forward in the first phase. One such example is child care. I have argued strongly that an apprenticeship training scheme in child care is necessary, progressive and good. I hope that the child care community come back on that.

On the matter of another area that I believe would drive up numbers, there is an established grade in the health sector called health care assistant which, in my judgment, would be very positive, and I have contributed this at the Apprenticeship Council of Ireland. There are thousands of people working at that grade in the HSE alone, apart from the private employers and so on in the health services. If we were to get such an employer interested in taking up that on the apprenticeship scheme, which, as the Deputy rightly said in her contribution to the employers when they attended the committee, which I read, is a combination of the German-Austrian model. It is work-based and classroom-based training. That would drive up the numbers greatly, but it would not just be about driving up numbers but also about getting a good, strong practical training standard at that grade level in the health sector.

The calls have been made and a lot of hard work is going on with apprenticeships. The target is 31,000 places. If we were to succeed in getting key apprenticeships in those sorts of areas, it would be much easier to achieve the gender balance. I am heartened by the level of work that is going on to develop apprenticeships.

The council has discussed getting involved with and having conversations with the Central Applications Office in order that these are real offers and that when young people coming up to the leaving certificate are making decisions with their parents about what courses they are going to take, apprenticeships outside of the construction sector are real options for them.