Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I could not agree with the Deputy more. The Minister, Deputy Harris, and I have taken every opportunity to seek to promote the whole area of apprenticeships. In conjunction with the action plan, we are taking concrete steps to embed apprenticeship offerings and further education and training options into the Central Applications Office, CAO, process. This will mainstream apprenticeships and destigmatise them. There is a suite of actions contained within the action plan to address gender balance, for example, and to promote more diversity in participation across the apprenticeships. We want to mainstream and showcase apprenticeships as rewarding and worthwhile career paths.

The Deputy referenced backlogs in off-the-job training.

We are acutely aware of that situation. The Deputy will be aware that it arose because of the challenges presented by Covid-19. We have also resourced SOLAS in the area of craft apprenticeships to address this backlog. We expect 40% of it to be gone by the end of the year and that everybody will be back to off-the-job training by next year. A director for the national apprenticeship office will be appointed in November and the office will be up and running shortly after.

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