Mr. Pat Lucey:

If I may I will work backwards from Deputies' questions. I will pass the housing question to Mr. Parlon. I will start with the apprenticeships because it is a great topic. I am delighted to hear Deputy Boyd Barrett's son is training to be an electrician. It is a fabulous way of life and a skill one can travel with. It is a skill one gets and never loses.

To address the issue of the funding, we are suggesting the reinstatement of a levy that was removed in the budget of 2014. I refer to phases 4 and 6 of the apprenticeship programme. When the participants were in the institutes of technology, SOLAS used to pay parts of the money for the training from the national training fund, NTF.

That was taken away in the 2014 budget. We are advocating that it should be reinstated to help them. Regarding what we can do about this issue, there is much happening. One of the greatest problems we have is that builders need confidence. They need confidence that there is going to be enough work in front of them to take on apprentices for the duration of a four-year programme. Unfortunately, that confidence is not there. The work that is happening is largely driven by multinational companies putting private money into construction taking place mainly in the Dublin region. We need more than that. There is not enough certainty in that for builders to invest in apprenticeships.

Everybody has been through the most awful recession. People are scared to invest. They do not want to be as big as they were and they do not want to earn as much money as they did back in the good times. They just want to make a decent living. There is a confidence issue here which really does need a sustained release of work in order to try to encourage growth again. What can we do with the apprentices? We have to attract them into the industry. I do not know if anybody present attended the Ireland Skills Live event that took place in March at the RDS. We were one of the sponsors. It consisted of those in 25 different apprenticeships taking part in a competition to find the best apprentice in each of the 25 areas. That took place in public at the RDS, with the apprentices competing against the clock and each other in joinery, hairdressing, heavy machinery maintenance, aircraft maintenance, welding, etc. It was absolutely fantastic. School pupils came to the event in busloads. Some 11,000 students came from all over the country on the Thursday and Friday. There is nothing like seeing the excitement on the faces of the younger generation looking at the opportunities in front of them. There was something for everybody. One individual was working on a small helicopter in front of the students, while in another area someone else was working on a jet engine. There were also people welding behind red see-through boards. It was possible to see what they were working on. People were also involved in bricklaying and hand-painting competitions. Everything was there. On the Saturday, we were concerned that the footfall might go down because the schools were closed. That morning, however, carloads of families showed up. Mothers and fathers came in with their children to see what the event was all about. One of the questions we were asked many times was where was it possible to find more information on all of this. There is no one place to find out about it.

The Ireland Skills Live event was a brilliant success and that came from collaboration between the industry and the State bodies that have been organising similar events in this area for a long time. For years, however, something like the joinery competition would have taken place in the Dublin Institute of Technology, DIT, with nobody looking at it. A couple of years ago, however, people went to the world championship in Azerbaijan and saw the Irish winners taking part there in a public competition. It was felt that the Irish competitors were disadvantaged. The industry here got together with the Higher Education Authority, HEA, and SOLAS. Everybody was a little afraid as to whether this new approach would work. The industry sponsored the event, the agencies got behind it and it was a tremendous success. I recommend that all of the members attend the Ireland Skills Live event when it takes place next year. If nothing else, they will get a lift from it.

We have a job to do to convince the younger generation that they do not have to go on to third level in order to get pieces of paper in whatever discipline. We want them to understand that we want them to do what they are good at. The current model of success is based on the school league tables. That model seems to rate success as being the number of students that schools get into universities. We would like to see a different model of success used, one whereby schools shepherd their students into what they are good at and what they want to do. If my local school produces the local electricians, engineers, painters and hairdressers, that is success to me. In that context, we are putting together a campaign to attract people into every area of the construction industry. We do not favour people going into one area over another. People should go into the areas that are a good fit for them. We speak to the professional bodies all the time, including Engineers Ireland, the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland and the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland. All of those professional bodies support what we want to do. As already stated, we will not discriminate. People should go into whatever areas are a good fit for them so that-----