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

The Deputy's suggestion has merit and we will highlight it in the Department. As I said, the Deputy should bear in mind we have increased the capacity of the State to deliver off-the-job training. That came at a cost and there are challenges in relation to that in terms of recruiting adequate numbers of suitably qualified tutors and trainers. They were asked to take on an additional workload to address the backlog issue and, to their credit, they did so. Going a step further by asking them to do this work out of regular hours in the evening time would be a big change for them but it is something we can discuss. I cannot give the Deputy a commitment in this regard now but I thank him for raising this interesting suggestion.

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