Dr. Mary-Liz Trant:

On the costs and challenges for the expansion of apprenticeships, a study was done in 2019 with support from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on the cost of training for the State. It came out at in and around €7,000 per apprentice per year. That was the average. That kind of analysis must be done again because we have more programmes coming on stream. There is a commitment in the action plan to look at that in detail. The other big cost for apprenticeships is capital expansion. We know we need to do a huge amount of that. I stated earlier that €20 million was allocated last year on top of the existing commitment to invest capital. We are just getting detailed figures now on what is needed for Housing for All and the retrofitting scheme. Given the scale of the challenge, it is our sense that we are going to need at least that much, if not more again, this year and for the next three to four years. That would go towards building more workshops and training spaces, and doing it in a very innovative way to accommodate many more apprentices coming through.

In higher education, apprentices pay a contribution and that issue is raised in the context of costs for apprentices. Apprenticeships are done on an earn-as-you-learn basis, so all apprentices get a salary or a training allowance on the craft apprenticeships. We hear feedback about how it can be difficult, particularly for older apprentices, to survive and manage on an apprenticeship salary, especially in the early years. This is something we will do work on, including through a wide survey of apprentices we will carry out later this year, to get that feedback in a much more systematic way. We will then examine what is possible and what will be needed if we want to deliver on that commitment to additional numbers.

We have some information, but we need to gather much more. The targets are there, as is the commitment by the Government to achieve them, and increased funding will be needed to match that. Part of our job will be to identify what that is and to set it out, and then to go about securing it for the coming years.