Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am a supporter of apprenticeships and of a strong apprenticeship programme. What we have currently is falling way short. The motion reads "of the 1,500 registrations targeted by Government for new business-led apprenticeships in 2018, only 410 starts (27 per cent of target) had taken place by 30th September this year, while the 2017 target was missed by 58 per cent". It further reads "only two per cent of the total apprentice population are female".

Having made that point, I want to address a glaring omission from the motion, namely, the question of college fees for apprentices. If we asked apprentices what are the biggest issues they deal with in the course of their apprenticeships, near the top of the list would be the penal college fees they are asked to pay. These amount to €1,000 a year, or more in some cases. More people drop out of apprenticeships at the point of block release than at any other time, often because they do not have enough money. As in Deputy Boyd Barrett's example, many apprentices have to travel to do their apprenticeships and do not live at home. They have to fork out for the cost of accommodation and pay huge sums to rack-renting landlords in addition to the fees of €1,000 they are charged. In 2014 and 2015, Germany abolished tuition fees for apprentices. At about the same time, the Government went in the opposite direction. SOLAS used to pay 70% of an apprentice's fee but that was cut to 0% and a charge of €1,000 per year was introduced. Given the skills shortage in the economy and the need for 50,000 apprentices a year, the simple way to encourage young people to do apprenticeships, as the Minister of State, Deputy Mitchell O'Connor, says we should, would be to reverse those cuts, follow the German example and abolish the fees. By the way, fees were abolished in Germany following nationwide protests by apprentices, a point that should be noted by apprentices and trade unions in this country.

There seems to be some confusion on the part of the Minister of State. She is confused, it seems, between apprenticeships on the one hand and internships on the other. Perhaps this confusion has smuggled itself into the motion as well. The Minister of State referred to young people doing internships in the Revenue Commissioners in Limerick which consist of four days a week on the job and one day a week of training. I would be interested in finding out the pay and conditions of those young people as I suspect they are undertaking internships as opposed to apprenticeships, which involve training for a trade or a profession.

I am concerned about aspects of the Fianna Fáil motion which refers to apprenticeships for the likes of engineering, journalism and digital broadcasting production at RTÉ and "parliamentary apprenticeships". I smell a rat when I hear this from political parties which have stood over schemes like JobBridge and have announced training for young people while in reality rolling out cheap labour schemes that have enabled cheapskate employers to exploit them. Why do we need apprenticeships in some of these fields when they are not necessarily professions or trades? Why not hire young people, pay them the rate for the job and give them training on the job? I wonder if some of the proposals here and some of the Minister's comments are intended to smuggle in cheap labour internships under the cover of genuine training for a profession or craft, which is the definition of an apprenticeship.

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