Dr. Mary-Liz Trant:

On the CAO matter, another indication of the impact is we have had a lot of contact from guidance counsellors and regional skills representatives to say that there are now more and more young people looking for apprenticeship options, and that the challenge is finding employers. We have this matching challenge all the time. We have a portal where employers can advertise vacancies but the numbers that use this are relatively small. We are looking at how on a county or regional basis we can actually start to put out better information in order that young people in school can genuinely see and find an apprenticeship opportunity. This is being actively worked on at the moment.

With regard to what is in place for the business community and the 8,300 employers already using apprenticeships, a lot of those employers are really positive and talk about their experiences in a very positive way. This has been a big plank of Generation Apprenticeship and in the promotion of apprenticeship opportunities. The employer grant was introduced this year for the newer apprenticeships with €2,000 per apprentice per year. This will be a big help for all of those apprenticeships where there is not a training allowance.

Another big thing we have started to work on is to make the whole system more accessible for employers. There is a portal, a technology solution for employers, where they can go on and see how many apprentices they have and how they are getting on. We really need to build on that and make it much more streamlined and more technology-based in how employers engage with the system.

There is a lot of work to be done and there is a big agenda of work now through the new office. The plan is that over the next 12 to 18 months we will see big steps forward to support that much greater number of employers who are choosing apprenticeships for recruitment of their talent.