Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Moynihan for the question. He is so right. Some of the biggest challenges we have involve increasing awareness and perhaps bringing about cultural and attitudinal change in regard to what we traditionally might have called the crafts, the trades or vocational education. I am committed to enhancing pathways for people after secondary school to try to move the conversation on, to show that there are different pathways to get a qualification and to emphasise that an apprenticeship is a real and substantive career pathway for learners. Working closely with the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, I published the action plan for apprenticeships, which aims to make apprenticeships more visible, more recognised and more appreciated by learners, parents, families and career guidance professionals. We have seen some positive signs on foot of a dedicated information campaign to promote apprenticeship as an attractive route to qualification and as a career pathway, including the highest number of newly registered apprentices on record last year.

The development of more vocational options and pathways, including apprenticeship taster courses at transition year, is being examined. We are working closely with the Minister, Deputy Foley, on the issue of senior cycle reform with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. I believe that if you can expose - for want of a better word - somebody in transition year to an apprenticeship, it could be very helpful. A central goal is to try to improve the provision of information to school leavers so that they have access to the same level of information about apprenticeships as they have about higher education.

I meet many people who are studying to be an apprentice. When I ask them if they came in straight from school, many of them laugh at me and say they only found out about it a few years after they left school. That needs to change. That is why we changed the CAO website to give apprenticeships the same parity of visibility as higher education. That is why we have launched a new national apprenticeship office. That is why we are providing a freefone guidance and advice helpline for any student or parent who wants information. Reaching schools and career guidance counsellors who can influence young people is so important. The National Apprenticeship Office is continuing to work with the Institute of Irish Guidance Counsellors to promote and increase awareness of apprenticeships.

Although people sometimes say this is not the case, I detect a real appetite from guidance counsellors to do what is best for their students and to have more information in this area. My Department has developed a careers in construction action plan, which we launched last August. This includes a new social media campaign that targets school leavers where they may find their information. Other communication initiatives include a new documentary on apprenticeships that will be available to all school students this year.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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That is a good question. While the answer is "Yes", those structures could be better. I recently met with the chairs of all our regional skills forums, almost all of whom are involved in businesses, to ask them to suggest what we can do at a regional level to reach out to businesses and make sure they have information around apprenticeships and the supports put in place by the Government to help employers, particularly small employers, to take on apprentices. As the Deputy knows, since January 2022, we have had an apprenticeship employer grant. We introduced this grant of €2,000 per apprentice per annum in recognition of the fact that even though there are benefits for a small business that wants to take on an apprentice, there can also be a cost in terms of time. Employers of apprentices who are not eligible for State payment of off-the-job training allowances are reimbursed at regular intervals in mid-year and at the end of the year. In 2023, more than 2,000 employers availed of the apprenticeship employer grant, with €5.351 million paid out in that year. We also now have a gender grant, which applies when an employer takes on somebody from a gender that is under-represented in a particular apprenticeship. We are trying to expand the pool of employers by going to the public sector. We have to remember that the public sector is one of the biggest employers of apprentices. It is based in every county, town and village. We are setting targets for the first time for public service apprenticeships.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Yes. My Department, and most specifically our National Apprenticeship Office, are working tirelessly to try to grow a coalition of people to support and promote apprenticeships through engaging with parent councils, boards of management, trade unions, teacher union representative bodies and guidance counsellors. There is a legitimate issue here that we need to address. I have tasked the National Apprenticeship Office with coming up with ideas around this because I am critical of the league tables. However, I also think it is a little bit on us because we do not provide alternative data. I am not speaking for The Irish Times, but they will say "well that is the only data we have". We need to do better at capturing the numbers of people from secondary schools who have gone on to apprenticeships. In that way we can publicly reward and recognise the schools that promote what might traditionally have been known as vocational training, crafts and training, thereby helping us to meet our housing and climate targets, among others. We have a piece of work to do to capture that data and present a much more holistic picture of what success in school looks like.