Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As I said in earlier exchanges with other Deputies, the Department is aware of the challenges and backlogs. We have put significant resources into dealing with the backlog, which is falling significantly. We will continue to work on that.

I appreciate the Deputy's point regarding apprentices having to travel distances to training centres. We are working on this issue too and allocating significant resources to developing more training centres and hiring more instructors and tutors.

The Deputy asked about night classes. Apprenticeship programmes require the apprentice to be in full-time employment with the sponsoring company. In order for the company to be registered as an approved employer, it undertakes a commitment to release the apprentice for his or her off-the-job training, which is held either in an education and training board or a technological university as a day-time programme. Owing to the structure of the programme and the agreement of the employer to release the apprentice to attend training, there is no evening provision available for any of the off-the-job phases at present.

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