Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I really welcome that. If one takes the figure of 300, that is the number of apprenticeships the ESB alone does every year. The local authorities have been dragging their feet on this. We need to sit down with them, examine why that is the case and determine what are the blockages. We need to be able to facilitate the local authorities as well as giving them the responsibility for ensuring that more apprenticeships happen.

The Government has not used public procurement contracts to incentivise large construction companies to increase the number of apprentices they employ. There is a real onus on the Government to ensure this is a condition of public procurement contracts, which may require liaison with the EU. There is a connection between the missed apprenticeship targets and the housing targets. This has really come into focus in the last few months. If one looks at retrofitting and all of the things that we need apprentices and skilled people for, it is clear that we need to use every tool available to us.

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