Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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There is only one, which is pipefitting, which is significantly longer than four years. That is only 1% of the apprenticeships. I am not in any way saying that is not something that we want to make progress on.

On what the Deputy said about female participation, 8% of the total apprenticeship population at present are women. It is an improvement but it is not where we want to be. We, obviously, want to grow this. Critical to this is career guidance in second level. All of the young people that I met, either in Lyon or in Dublin at WorldSkills, all said the same. It was about career guidance and having that option presented to them. One of the most tragic things that was said to me in the course of that was some young lad who got the equivalent of what we got, probably 500 points, and who wanted to do an apprenticeship. What was said to him was, "Is that not an awful waste of a good leaving cert?" We have to move away from that space. He went on and became an electrician. I am sure he is probably doing very well for himself at present. More power to him. We need to change this narrative that somehow, there is a difference between an apprenticeship and a degree. In continental Europe, as I saw in Lyon, it is not a case of either-or; it is both.

We recently launched, in the Deputy's native city, an apprenticeship run between Cork ETB and UCC on social work and social care. We need to start looking at other disciplines as well, not only the craft apprenticeships which have been fundamental to the construction sector and which are very positive, but also other disciplines as well. We need to see are there other areas that we can expand into, either by way of the traditional craft model or another model, that will bring more women into it. Earn-as-you-learn has been hugely successful. It gives people an opportunity to have an income at a time when they otherwise would not. We need to change the dial. In that, I have a job to talk to the mothers and fathers of Ireland as well. There are people who tell me out straight that they would not have liked to have gone to university, they did not want to go to university but wanted to do an apprenticeship. We need to view it as a sound career choice that people can get a very good income from and they can be very happy with. We need to invest in the communications of it as much as the delivery of it.