Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Government on the progress that is being made. When I went into education back in 2016, we set a broad objective to create the best education and training system in Europe. One of the areas where we really did need to pick up our performance was the area of apprenticeships. It is encouraging to see there are now 67 apprenticeships. I understand there are another 30 in the pipeline.

We are on a very positive path in respect of this element. The likes of Germany or Australia probably have three times our level of apprenticeship participation, even if we are to hit the target of 10,000 registrations each year by 2025 which the Minister has set. Therefore, there is a way to go. The issue is how we enhance the capacity of our system to deliver quality apprenticeships.

The principle of “earn as you learn” is valuable. This is not just the case for school-leavers, many of whom are under pressure and need the opportunity to earn as they learn, but increasingly for people who will have to change direction mid-career. Apprenticeships are very much a route to make those changes. I share the concerns that some of the pay levels may be too low. We need to see this as a quality route. We need to see more engagement from the enterprise sector to recognise that this is a crucial piece of enterprises being able to remain competitive in the long term.

We also have to bear in mind that massive change is occurring in the global economy. We are very dependent on global competition to survive.

There are many trends, for example, responding to climate change, adapting to the circular economy and understanding and responding to the impact that artificial intelligence will have on the composition of our workforce and the types of job.

In many ways, this change will create opportunities more attuned to the approach of apprenticeships rather than the traditional third level education route that has been the dominant element in Irish thinking. There are practical elements that we will see, for example, the arrival of electric vehicles, heat pumps and, I hope, district heating, which is underdeveloped in Ireland. By adopting a circular approach, the repair of products will become more prevalent. We will see the recovery of materials for reuse. These are new expectations in the economy and will fall on enterprises. The apprenticeship route is the simplest and most effective way for sectors to recognise these changes and adapt to them by participating collectively in programmes that are designed to respond to changing needs. The extent to which enterprises can shape the content of the courses delivered is particularly unique. It gives a useful route for enterprises to recognise how they can anticipate and be ready for really big changes, as digitisation, the circular economy and climate change impact on their sectors.

We need to see a wider range of employers becoming involved in apprenticeship programmes in a meaningful way. Let us be honest: the public service has not been leading by example in this respect. At the moment just over 1% of all apprenticeships are coming from the public service. The semi-State bodies have a much better record. Even though they are far smaller in size, they contribute about 2%. There is immense potential for the public service to become exemplars in developing new apprenticeships that respond to the sort of challenges it is experiencing. Right through the public service, we can see the need for responding to changing needs, whether it be in special education, caring and in many areas where there are opportunities for the public service to be a leader in developing these responses. It could also be a leader in tackling one of the remaining obstacles that stands in the way of a wider uptake of apprenticeships, in that it could provide reliable recruitment channels for people who want to take up apprenticeships but who are not in the know. I refer to people who do not have contact with employers and who do not know people who might give them an employment contract. I think the public service could be a real leader in developing those reliable recruitment channels in order that people who have ambition to do apprenticeships can have a fair chance to realise that ambition effectively.

The same can be said of other sectors as well. As far as I know, it is only the financial services sector that has moved to the central recruitment of apprentices. It provides a go-to place where anyone who wants to do an apprenticeship in financial service can go to one place so that the application can be processed, and there is support from the sector to take on those who meet the criteria. We need to see more of that established. It is one thing to have access to information on the CAO site, but it is a very different thing to have access to a portal that would actually see a person placed on a programme. That is the frontier that we still need to cross. If the public service became more actively involved in apprenticeships and their development, it could lead to us seeing that established. The National Training Fund, which has a surplus within it, could well be deployed to looking at making it easier for both employers and apprentices to become involved and to have a good livelihood out of their involvement in it. We need to think creatively about how that could be done.

The other remaining frontier is the reform of the leaving certificate. Sadly, we have insisted over the years on a leaving certificate that is designed essentially for people going on to third level colleges. In my view, the memory-based examination system has become an easy route for third level colleges to distort what happens at second level in order to make it easy for them to recruit people to their undergraduate programmes. We need to accelerate the willingness to reform the leaving certificate to make it much more open to people who have different routes other than the traditional route of going into third level. We also must make it clear that people who take up apprenticeships can participate fully in the opportunities to go on to do third level degrees if that is what they choose.

In conclusion, I believe in the long term, we will need an upskilling suite that is far more developed than the one we now have because workers will need more security in a faster changing environment. We have the elements of that with Springboard and with the human capital initiative, with apprenticeships and with elements of the further education and training system. They are a good foundation but we need to seek to integrate those and develop a new social contract where people would see that part of what we do as a community is ensure that people have opportunities throughout their lives to upskill, without placing undue pressure on them or their families to do so.

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