John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This motion should not be confrontational. It should be collaborative and we should work together on it. Apprenticeship training is an under-utilised and under-developed resource. Deputy Byrne referred to the fact that only 2% of school leavers aspire to apprenticeship training. Worse, the number of women in apprenticeship training is very low. That is traditionally because apprenticeships focused on the crafts. In recent years that has broadened. There is huge scope. There are multinational companies operating in this country that have apprenticeship training schemes for a range of skills in other countries but they do not provide them here. The role of SOLAS has to be expanded significantly. It has to take a lead and be much more proactive about the type of training it provides.

I am not having a go at the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Skills, Deputy Halligan, but he needs to be much more ambitious. Two weeks ago he told me: "Arising from our two calls for apprenticeship proposals in 2015 and 2017 sixteen new apprenticeships have now been developed in a range of new occupations, including financial services, engineering, ICT, hospitality, logistics and accounting." He went on to say and will probably repeat it today, "Further new apprenticeships will get underway later this year and throughout 2019". That is correct but the problem is we are not attracting the significant numbers of people into those apprenticeships that we could and should. The numbers engaging in the new apprenticeships do not compare with those in the traditional old craft apprenticeships.

The Minister of State talks about the increased number saying that at the end of September this year it was 7% ahead of the same period last year. That is not significant enough. We are starting from a low base. We need to be much more ambitious and we need to go back to our students in second level schools and show them that this is a real career path, that it is on a par with any other third level course and that the qualification they get can be measured in such a way and give them the type of career progression that they would think they are getting from traditional third level courses. Apprenticeship training needs those career paths.

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