Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

The Deputy is right; those statistics are stark and unacceptable. They are in the context of our training facilities, in effect, being closed for the guts of the pandemic. I think off-the-job training facilities were closed for nine out of the first 12 months and they were operating at significantly reduced capacity throughout 2020 and 2021. Therefore, that would play into the figures of people who qualified in 20203. We also have a significant backlog challenge primarily caused by Covid. At its peak, we had 8,253 waiting more than six months to access off-the-job apprenticeship training. At the end of November last year, that had fallen to 5,500, but it has proven very stubborn to get further below that figure.

Essentially, because of the success in people wanting to do apprenticeships, we were registering people effectively as fast as we could as we could train them. That prompted the development of a kind of a craft emergency backlog plan and that is really throwing everything at it to eliminate the need for anyone to be in the circumstances the Deputy has been contacted about once and for all and to move towards elimination by the end of this year.

The emergency backlog plan involves things like asking our instructors to deliver three intakes per year instead of two intakes. It is about setting up new craft apprenticeship workshop facilities and putting enhanced cover instructor arrangements in place because if three intakes instead of two are being delivered, cover arrangements are needed so that people can deliver. Between the typical courses-----