Mr. Michael Hourihan:

The Deputy is quite right. Significant promotion is going on at present with incentives for employers to take on apprentices and rightly so. However, there is still a backlog in some of the trades. Was it Mr. McSherry who said it would be five years by the time he was qualified? Promotion is great, but everything has to be in place to make sure that the throughput can run through correctly. That is very important as well. Numbers are a target but the whole apprenticeship system, or the traditional craft apprenticeship system in any case, is employer led. It is very difficult to put a number on targets or to put a target in place when one is depending on someone else to show interest and engage in that side of it. The bottom line is that the numbers will not be there if the employers do not want them.