Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This whole discussion on skills is one of the most important ones we can have in these Houses because so much else of what we talk about here is dependent on getting this right. We talk a lot about housing. The Deputy will have heard me talk about this yesterday in Kildare. We need about 27,000 more people to work in the construction sector. The Deputy and I are not going to build the houses. That is why we are putting a concerted focus on apprenticeships. At the moment we take on about 6,000 construction apprentices a year. That will rise to 9,000 next year, a 50% increase. From January we will bring in a subsidy whereby we will pay employers about €2,000 per year per new apprentice they take on to make it easier for employers. We are changing the CAO website such that the young students I was speaking to in Kildare yesterday see not just the university options but also the technical options, the colleges of further education and the apprenticeships and that they are not hidden away as fallback options but seen as real, viable, important careers, which they are. That attention and focus we are providing on apprenticeships will really improve the technical skills needs of our country, coupled with the answer I gave the Deputy regarding the focus on STEM, engineering, ICT and science in our universities.

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