Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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With regard to the NFT, the Act it was set up under provides that: "...information on the existing and likely future skills requirement of the economy ... The Act requires that any surplus funding remains in the NTF account to provide for reinvestment in eligible training activities". We have covered that ground fairly well. Obviously the money is there and it is good to have the money but it is frustrating, which has been expressed this morning, that we are not able to utilise it.

My questions are in the context of people not being able to get a plumber or a mechanic, the national car test, NCT, centres cannot get technicians or mechanics and garages cannot get them. To get a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter - I could go on - or a lot of the traditional tradesmen, the issue is trying to find what is happening there and what can be done to address this. The Act is clear in what the purpose of the NTF is, and the Department has a research remit to find out where there are gaps in the labour force. This is not a gap; it is as wide as Croke Park. The gap that is there is huge.

We have to do something about it because we are talking about building student accommodation and repurposing buildings. We have a housing crisis. There is a huge block in terms of the construction sector. There is retrofitting and energy conservation. I acknowledge that good work is being done by the ETBs, particularly in the Mount Lucas Construction Training Centre. When I first highlighted it on the floor of the Dáil nearly 12 years ago, 16 people had gone through it in the previous year. It is a huge facility and I raised it because of the fact that almost nothing was happening there. That is a very busy place today, as is the Laois and Offaly ETB. The Department has a role in it through SOLAS and what is happening there is fantastic in terms of skilling people for retrofitting and some of the other skills that will be required. There are clearly huge gaps and I want to try to figure out what is going on here. We have the funding for this and the National Training Fund. How can the problem be addressed?

I am told that one of the big problems is that employers traditionally took on an apprentice. The apprentice would go off for 12 weeks or so every year to one of the regional training colleges or somewhere else, and would come back and do the remaining nine months with the employer. A lot of employers do not want that. Is that the problem? What is happening in this regard because in terms of the utilisation of the NTF, is it being put it into the right places? Can more be done? Can we do more with this fund to entice employers? Are there other opportunities? If employers in the private sector are not doing it, there are 31 local authorities and all of those local authorities need to get trades. Apprentices can be of enormous benefit. If a plumber has an apprentice with him, they might not get twice as much work done but they might increase their output by 50% or 60%. There is the Office of Public Works, various other bodies and universities. Can apprentices be trained within a lot of public bodies? Traditionally, a lot of apprentices were trained through the semi-State sector.

We have sold off a lot of the family silver, but we still have the ESB, Bord na Móna, which was successfully resurrected, and many other semi-State companies. Can we develop apprenticeships in them? We have to fix the problem. When people come through the apprenticeships, they may not want to stay in those companies. They may want to work in the private sector or become self-employed. There is a yawning gap in apprenticeship in the traditional trades. We can train people at university, but the people who are trying to have work done in businesses or private work on their homes often say to me that they cannot get tradespeople. It is a major problem in the economy and society and we need to be innovative in how we address it. What is the problem and what is being done to solve it?