Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I understand the Minister for Education and Skills is planning to meet the USI about this issue. He is making arrangements for a date for the meeting. My understanding of the issue is that a student registration fee applies throughout the education system and what is applied in the case of apprentices is on a pro rata basis.

The Government is looking at the apprenticeship system very closely. The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, has received a report from a review carried out by Mr. Kevin Duffy on apprenticeships. The role of apprenticeships in the modern economy is part of what we need to do in order to get people back to work and ensure that the economy fully recovers. Apprenticeships are used in a much wider way in other countries than in this country. We have tended to have an apprenticeship system for a fairly limited range of trades. There is a much wider definition and concept of apprenticeships in other European countries. There are a number of things we can probably learn from that.

We must also ensure that employers are open to taking on apprentices. That must be part of the recovery story as we move forward. Even in good times we saw a reluctance on the part of some employers to take on apprentices. There are two parts to the apprenticeship process; there is the on-the-job training and experience that the apprentice gets, and there is also the formal education part, which is in a school or college. The issue to which Deputy Collins’s question relates in particular is the pro rata student registration charge which applies to the formal education element of an apprenticeship. In respect of that issue, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, has indicated his willingness to meet the USI about it.

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