Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Wynne.

We have a crisis here. We have a crisis with the number of apprenticeships that are being commenced. We have a crisis with the skills shortage that is holding back our ability to tackle our housing crisis. We have Government plans, announcements and so on and a target of 10,000 apprenticeships the year by 2025. Interestingly, Deputy Bruton spoke earlier about his experience when he was the Minister. If you go back to 2016, the Government then announced a target of 9,000. Now, seven years on, the Government is increasing its target by 1,000 and pushing it forward to 2025. It does not smack of very significant ambition.

What is the fundamental reason for the lack of apprenticeship opportunities and people taking up apprenticeships? Fundamentally it is about reliance the private sector. Like so much in our economy and our society, the problems we face are basically because the Government has outsourced responsibility to the private sector. When it comes to educating people to work in our schools and when it comes to educating people to heal people, to work in our in our hospital with nurses, doctors etc., we do not outsource that to a for-profit health sector or for-profit education system. The State educates those people so that they are able to provide these necessary skills.

However, when it comes to construction, for example, or what will be a vital area of climate response in all its myriad of forms, we are largely relying on the private sector to provide apprenticeships. That simply is not happening. Employment in construction has grown by 50,000 since 2013 but apprenticeships have not increased to any significant degree and in some areas like in the wet trades, they have actually decreased. That is linked to the change in the model of the construction sector and the reliance on layers of subcontractors or small companies and very little direct employment. There has been a massive decline in direct employment. That is now a fundamental block in addressing the skills shortage to be able to build homes at scale in order to address the housing crisis as quickly as is possible.

This issue has been discussed in Britain. The UK Construction Leadership Council industry skills plan stated that in order to improve apprentice numbers to increase skills training and diversity in the industry it is essential to increase the levels of direct employment. However, there is no way to compel the private sector to increase the levels of direct employment. It has moved to this horrendous model, from the point of view of workers, of how the whole construction sector is an organised. It clearly points towards the need and is another very significant argument for a State construction company. A very important paper was published last week by Dr. Rory Hearne and Phil Murphy which makes the case for apprenticeships. They stated:

[T]he skills shortage cannot be resolved until we create job security within the construction sector. A state construction company which offered quality permanent employment, properly paid apprenticeships, improved wages and employee benefits (e.g. improved pension provisions, early retirement schemes, sickness pay, and death-in-service compensation), better regulation, and improved safety and quality standards.

The private sector is not set up to provide the apprenticeships on the scale that is required and is not attractive to workers for a variety of very understandable reasons. Therefore, we should stop outsourcing this that the private sector and set up a State construction agency.

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