Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Equally, our objective is to learn lessons from Covid-19 and accelerate improvements and reforms in our health service delivery in the context of community delivery, rehab, home care-based provision and community diagnosing, keeping people out of hospital as long as we possibly can and moving more into prevention, primary care and community care sides. That is the objective of Government while also increasing capacity in the rehab community hospital beds and in the acute hospital situation.

Deputy Barry referred to youth unemployment. The €200 million is a sizeable allocation. I take the Deputy's point on quality. That must be looked at, and not just looked at but proper mechanisms must be in place to ensure that the quality of the provision is of a high order. There is a very good scheme to incentivise apprenticeships and, historically, we had a good apprenticeship system. The institutes of technology were great providers of apprenticeship training. The education and training boards are now leading it. I want to get good structured quality training that will get people opportunities and employment.

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