Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I was anxious to make that point.

I do not have much time left so I wish to say a little about apprenticeships. I wish the Minister, Deputy Bruton, and the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, well in making progress in that area. One of the major objectives of myself and my predecessor, former Deputy Ruairí Quinn, was to increase the number of apprenticeships available in Ireland. We increased the number of traditional apprenticeships in the construction sector by 100%. We also established the Apprenticeship Council of Ireland. It made a recommendation on more than 80 new forms of apprenticeship and began the process of introducing over 20 of them in the current academic year. That widened the availability of apprenticeships in many different areas, such as manufacturing, the built environment, tourism, sport, cooking, transport distribution, logistics, information technology, financial services and so forth. That gives opportunities to young people to take an alternative route, which we have not had previously in Ireland in a real way. I am very proud to have been part of that.

I am pleased that the Government intends to continue that. It is certainly something we will support but we will also keep the Government accountable because we need to see the progress that is required in that area.

We want to give young people the opportunity throughout the educational process. This is why we support the early years interventions this year, why we introduced the second preschool year last year, why we are so disappointed that class size and capitation have not been appropriately addressed and why we introduced the apprenticeships and opportunities at third level, about which Deputy Burton spoke. We want to ensure young people have all these choices and opportunities and that they are valued equally regardless of whether they take the apprenticeship or higher education route.

Deputy Barry spoke about the privatisation of higher education but I do not think that the Irish higher education system is in the bracket he spoke about when he referred to Great Britain and the US. There is great pride in our higher education institutions in how they provide for all our students. I do not think that privatisation is the direction in which our higher education system is going.

For us in the Labour Party, education is very important. This is why we have chosen to use our Private Members' time to highlight the particular issues in education that we feel need to be appropriately addressed by Government, particularly the fact we have not seen the progress we could have had to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio, because it is not very expensive to do, and give all our children from the very early years the opportunity to get the individual attention so many of them need in our school system to prepare them for life and to allow them to fulfil their potential. This is especially so for those children who may not have had the opportunities because their parents may not have been particularly well educated, to give them the early start and opportunities they so need.

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