Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy and I absolutely will because it is key for the mental health and wellbeing of young people that we do not have such a narrow definition of success. I think the Central Applications Office, CAO, process and league tables and that soft of stuff have brought us to that in recent years. It is also key for societal good because so much of what we need to progress around housing, climate and other areas will require more people becoming apprentices, doing traineeships, and going into further education and training as well. I want to assure the Deputy that as regards to retrofitting, we need 17,000 more people working in retrofitting. We have the capacity through the education sector to meet that target. What we now need to do is whet the demand. There are encouraging signs that more people are coming forward and we have to get the message out to employers that they can actually release their staff for a very small number of days and access these free retrofitting courses and future-proof their workplaces.

Regarding apprenticeship numbers, the honest answer to the question is 2021 was a bumper year as an adjustment to Covid-19 and there was a lot of pent-up demand. The actual figures in 2022 were very significantly up on all the pre-Covid-19 years as well and figures for this year show the first two months are 30% higher in terms of apprenticeship registrations than in 2022.

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