Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Apprentices and people engaging in further education are future front-line workers who will deal with a range of challenges facing our society. They will be on the front line against climate change in the context of the retrofitting programme and in combating biodiversity loss. They will clearly and obviously be needed to tackle the housing crisis in a meaningful way. There is a huge dearth of skilled people in that area. The care economy is also expanding due to the clear demographic trends towards older people. Valuing them and providing for them as part of the caring economy will be a huge part of our future economy. The appearance of further education courses on the CAO course list is extremely important for a number of reasons. It is about ease of access but it also goes some way towards dispelling what a previous contributor called a cultural handbrake against apprenticeships and exploding any remaining prejudices about this pathway into education.

I visited the Waterford training centre two weeks in order to look at its retrofitting courses. We need to raise awareness about micro-credentials. Someone who is a plasterer already can be in and out of Waterford training centre and accredited for retrofitting in three days. It is similar for window fitters. Two of the days can be done online with only one day in the centre. People can then be fully accredited to move into this new and rapidly expanding area of the economy. We have to scale that as quickly as we possibly can. It is critically important.

Professor Vincent Cunnane has said that technological universities are a long ladder of opportunity. I welcome that. Someone could begin at apprenticeship level but the sky is the limit. People do not have to stop once they come out of their apprenticeship. There is a pathway that will lead them all the way to level 10 if they wish to get there.

We are here to discuss future funding and I am not sure I have come away with a clear picture of the challenges that face the sector from a future funding point of view. I ask the witnesses to dig down into that in a more detailed and granular way. What an apprenticeship is has changed and been blended so much that the answers will be different for a sparks, a brickie or a plasterer, and there will be a different range of answers for someone in the caring economy or the tech industry. What cost are we talking about for the student or apprentice walking in the door? Is it a set level of costs over the couple of years that they are training? What is the cost to employers? If an employer decides to take an apprentice on, what will it cost them? What is the resulting cost to the State? Do we need to expand that? That is what we are here to discuss. Are there other funding sources?

Deputy Conway-Walsh referred to European funding. Are there other funding sources that we need to put into the mix? If we are discussing funding coming in, are we discussing the funding coming out? Is it properly spread between the likes of SOLAS and the technological universities? Universities are now moving into this area. ETBs will also want a slice of that money. I ask the witnesses to identify the problems that are there. Do we have enough money coming in? What are the costs? Is there a cost barrier for somebody from a lower socioeconomic background to stepping onto the first rung of this long ladder of education or opportunity? Are we getting enough money in the door? Are there issues around distributing and dispersing that money across the range of ETBs, technological universities, SOLAS, etc.? These are very broad questions but they are aimed at helping me better understand funding in this area.