Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted that Fianna Fáil has tabled this Private Member's motion. We need to have a national conversation about apprenticeships. While apprenticeships are an exciting option for many young people, they are the Cinderella of career options and are not seen by many young people and their parents as viable or attractive. I am delighted that we are working together to get this message out. I will spend my time trying to talk to parents to encourage their children to take up apprenticeships. We as a country need to look at what we do on the day that the leaving certificate results come out. We celebrate everyone who gets 600 points or more and talk about higher education offerings, who has the highest points and who is going to which college. At the same time, we ignore a cohort of students who are innately intelligent and very capable but for whom the leaving certificate may not have been appropriate, either on the day they sat the examination or when they were first offered a choice of subjects.

We need to provide a viable option for students. To be fair, apprenticeships are available but they are not being taken up. Previous speakers cited statistics and the Minister of State, Deputy John Halligan, will also provide numerous figures when he contributes later. I hope parents are listening to me. I have had the opportunity to visit the colleges of further education in Dún Laoghaire, Sallynoggin, Blackrock and Longford. I am often invited, as the Minister of State with responsibility for higher education, to award certificates to graduates. I always try to take the opportunity to talk to graduates for a few minutes and I always ask what they are thinking of doing next. Almost all of them are going on to further education and college or taking up jobs. They are almost all very confident and articulate, often job-ready, and have the skills to work.

I visited the accountancy technician class in Blackrock College of Further Education on Monday and I was bowled over by the ability of the students. I went through the class, who were from all over the country, and they told me about the different employers with which they work four days a week. They are then released every Monday to attend college, get class experience and sit examinations for their accountancy technician certificate. They were very confident, assured and ambitious for what they want to do in the future. Many wanted to go on to study accountancy. There are many pathways for students and not everything is about points in the leaving certificate.

Deputy Thomas Byrne noted the need to have internships in State bodies. The Revenue Commissioners have taken on ten trainee apprentices in Limerick. They are in the Revenue offices for four days each week and are trained on another day. When I was Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, I was told that we needed hundreds of commis chefs. That has been turned around and from next September Dún Laoghaire Further Education Institute will offer commis chef trainee apprenticeships. The system is responding. We have come out of a recession, which has been difficult. The message from all of us in this Chamber is for parents to encourage their children and students to consider an apprenticeship. I had the privilege of speaking at a conference of guidance counsellors a fortnight ago. They were extremely vocal in their support of apprenticeships and want to make students aware of them. They cannot force students into apprenticeships but certainly want to encourage them.

Of the 2% of school leavers who take up apprenticeships, only 2% are female. A bursary is available to employers in the traditional internships if they take on female interns. It is up to €2,600 for eligible employers who take on female apprentices for traditional apprenticeships. We want this to happen and we are working with SOLAS, the ETBs, the colleges of further education and the institutes of technology. Students who go to a technological university will have the option of doing an apprenticeship. They can continue on that educational pathway or step out along the way if they wish. Perhaps they will then step back in and do a level 8 degree, a doctorate or something else, depending on how they want to proceed. They should know, however, that pathways, internships and apprentices are available.

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