Ms Claire McGee:

The point about employers engaging more with apprenticeship programmes is valid. One of our recommendations as part of the review of the action plan for apprenticeships in 2021 was that a strong focus was needed on the promotion and development of the capacity of employers to take on apprentices. We communicated that strongly to SOLAS. One of its priorities from now until the delivery of the next plan is the prioritisation around employers and championing the opportunity that exists in apprenticeships. It is a challenge. I think that is because it is new ground for many employers.

The Deputy mentioned the financial services programme, which was led by IBEC, where a consortium of different financial services companies came together and centrally hired apprentices who then went into different companies. Different industry sectors took on different models to be able to do that, probably reflecting the nature of their businesses. That is probably one of the challenges we have with education and enterprise engagement. We tend to see enterprise as a homogenous group in which everyone has exactly the same challenges and the same issues to solve and that we will fix it with one grant programme, whereas Actually in different industry sectors there are very discrete and distinct needs depending on the nature of the company within that industry sector.

Some degree of flexibility is perhaps required on it, but we would like to see a lot more focus from the National Apprenticeship Office being geared towards employers and promoting this opportunity amongst employers. It takes a lot of shoe leather, many cups of coffee and collaboration talks to be able to say it is new ground for an employer and to offer to help enable them to champion it. I would also like to see more universities engaging with the apprenticeship programme. I liked Dr. Freeman's analogy. Let us tip the playing field to demonstrate perhaps how we can actually bring more people into the apprenticeship system. We only have one level 10 apprenticeship programme, which is run through the University of Limerick. There is a really strong history of apprenticeship style learning across the university system, whether that is through medical or legal training. It exists, but we do not actually call it an apprenticeship programme. The knowledge, capacity and experience is there. Perhaps if apprenticeships were seen more through the more traditional university system, we might see more engagement from employers. There is probably more work that needs to be done with prioritisation around engaging employers with the system. That is noted. We can take that back into our system and speak about it further.