Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

On the apprenticeship question, I will speak briefly about the waiting lists and the structural issues and Dr. Trant will speak to the cultural issues, the developments being worked on and the support we can provide to people to engage them in apprenticeship.

I will not repeat what I said in my opening statement but I do want to reassure the Deputy, as we have done in the past, that we are in an emergency situation. We know the level of waiting lists are not acceptable. We have made significant inroads in terms of addressing the waiting lists. There were 8,300 waiting over six months at the end of last summer. That is down to 5,608. The 70% of people who were on the waiting lists at the end of the summer have now got back into training. We are making inroads. In a way, they are victims of the success in terms of more and more people wanting to be an apprentice. Almost 7,000 joined the craft apprenticeship system last year. They are joining that queue. The Deputy is right that issues such as not being able to recruit instructors are limiting our ability to address that issue.

On the instructor question, we have got agreement not to automatically put them on the first point of the scale. If they can prove they are on a higher level of income, we can bring them on at a salary closer to that level. We all know it is not directly comparable but we can, at least, do that for them. We are also working closely with the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, to try to get people closer to retirement age who maybe do not want to be on site as much to think about the instructor route as a new career. It is a big issue and it is inhibiting us but we are working on it.

On the cultural point, I mentioned the figure of 35,000. Some 20,000 people who visited the CAO website went on to our bespoke apprenticeship options. It is helping people to think about what their options are. The proof will be in whether that leads to them actually taking up apprenticeships.