Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister and Minister of State have spoken positively about improving the output of craft apprenoticeships. They have also widened the opportunities for people to pursue consortia apprenticeships. However, the current situation is simply not good enough for those seeking off-the-job training. There are around 9,000 people waiting for levels 2, 4 and 6 training, which is a crazy figure.

I have been inundated with messages from young craft apprentices who have been waiting for long periods of time, which is, naturally, very frustrating for them. People have told me they have been waiting for three years, which is a significant amount of time especially when we want to keep people in the sector. For much of that time people are earning sub-minimum wage rates because they cannot complete their off-the-job training. A concern expressed to me was that while dealing with level 2 off-the-job training, levels 4 and 6 are being pushed back. Can the Minister of State confirm whether that is happening?

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