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

The Deputy rightly outlined the issues in relation to retention rates in our action plan for apprenticeships. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform carried out a review of the cost of apprenticeships in 2019. It highlighted the need to standardise the cost data collection. Basically, inconsistent and decentralised reporting in areas such as costs and tracking of apprentices means that the information to support the assessment of spend on apprenticeship was unavailable, retention rates are not recorded centrally and the impact of programmes in terms delivering employer and apprentice requirements had not yet been assessed at a central level. That is now changing, obviously, with the National Apprenticeship Office.

Apprentice recruitment is heavily linked to economic activity, with immediate impacts on recruitment and retention rates where there is a decline in activity. Under the action plan, by the end of 2022, the National Apprenticeship Office will establish a performance framework to assess efficiency and effectiveness of apprenticeships to include monitoring of: employer and apprentice mix in terms of employer size; apprentice gender, ethnicity, age, disability and socioeconomic background; apprentice retention rates; and an annual survey of apprentice employers in educational institutions and consortia. Separately, SOLAS is examining its apprenticeship data systems with a view to enhancing data collection and the analysis capabilities arising from it.

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