Mr. Errol Close:

The training timeframe will depend on the type of certificate they hold in their hands at present. It can take from a matter of days to weeks to retrain. In some instances people have undertaken these training exercises as part of an overall apprentice scheme. They will not need to go back and do the full course. We are probably talking about a week to two weeks, depending on the type of certificate they hold. There would be an additional cost associated with that as well. In terms of the extension, the Senator is quite correct. It is for the six-month period that I stipulated. They need to have a valid UK certificate immediately prior to the end of the transition period, that is, by the end of this year. They have six months' further validity under the proposed primary legislation to continue to operate in the sector and the first four months of that period to apply to the EPA. The reason for the difference between the four and six months is that two months allows the EPA the turnaround time to process any certificates it gets in the first four months, before the end of the six-month validity period.