Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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106. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to detail the uptake of the supports to help to achieve a better gender balance in apprenticeships; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37513/25]

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I call Deputy O'Connell on behalf of Deputy Boland.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister. Will he detail the update on supports to help to achieve a better gender balance in apprenticeships?

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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I thank the Deputy. I really appreciate the question because it is something that is very important to me.

Ensuring Ireland's apprenticeship population reflects the diversity in our society is a cornerstone in implementing the Action Plan on Apprenticeships 2021-2025. A key objective of this is improving gender balance across all apprenticeship programmes. In implementing the action plan in January 2022, the Government introduced a targeted grant of €2,666 which is available to employers who employ apprentices from a minority gender on programmes which already have over 80% representation of a single gender. This initiative was designed to encourage greater gender diversity in traditionally male or female dominated fields. Of course, as the Deputy knows, it is traditionally male dominated fields. Since its introduction, we have seen a 64% increase in female participation in apprenticeships. In truth, as the Deputy and I know, we are starting from a low level so an increase of 64%, while substantial, still means we have a lot more work to do. An important point to make is that the introduction and growth of consortia-led apprenticeships in 2016 has considerably increased female participation. Of the 2,579 female apprentices at the end of 2024, more than 2,000 were participating in consortia-led apprenticeships.

Apart from that, my Department has launched the Careers in Construction action plan, with initiatives to highlight opportunities in construction for women and girls, including the "building heroes" social media peer to peer campaign, which I will deal with a little bit more later, along with the "facts, faces, futures" campaign, which I will give the Deputy more detail on in a minute.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State. There have been some notable successes. For example, with aircraft mechanics, women's participation has gone from 11% to 18%. That is possibly an area from where we could take some learnings on it. One of the other things I wanted to follow up on is the fact the targets for female participation are quite ambitious. From 2023 to 2025, we are looking for an increase of 124%. That is why I ask about the measures we have in place. How will we get there and how effective are those measures? The €2,666 contribution per apprentice is an interesting contribution and I wonder has there been any uptake by male apprentices of that or has that gone mostly to people employing female apprentices?

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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I thank the Deputy. The main area we are looking at there is the area of hairdressing. It is the one area where that would have increased. Gender balance in craft apprenticeships has increased significantly since the launch of the action plan, with the number of female craft apprenticeships more than doubling from 260 to 533, an increase of exactly 105%. I will be honest with the Deputy. When you start from a low base, having a big increase is not that difficult. The gender bursary has made a real difference and we can see from the figures that it increased from 260 in 2021 to 537 in 2024. At the end of June this year, 533 women were in that sector. Those are real signs of progress in getting more and more women involved.

Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State. I will come back to the bursary again. Are there specific sectors where the uptake was more than others? Is there thus an opportunity to target other sectors with low representation, particularly of women? I agree and assumed hairdressing was the one area where there might be a balance to be struck. Are there learnings from sectors which may have been more successful in taking advantage of that bursary that can be applied to other sectors to try to encourage more women's participation? I agree, we are starting from a very low base. The numbers are moving in the right direction but the target of a 124% increase in two years is very ambitious and I would like to see that we have the measures in place to help us to achieve that.

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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As I explained, the increase in craft apprenticeships is quite significant. We also have another campaign, the faces, facts, futures campaign, which was launched in 2023 and connects all-girls schools in the country with the National Apprentice Office, which publicised this campaign. Looking at registration figures for apprenticeships, they have increased significantly since the launch of this campaign by approximately 31% between the end of 2022 and 2024. The Deputy asked for stats and we saw 887 female apprenticeship registration figures in 2022. At the end of 2024, that figure had increased to almost 1,200. That is an ongoing campaign. It is really powerful. Of course, we also have the "building heroes" campaign. I do not know if the Deputy is familiar with it but these are men and women, but women also, who are involved in the construction sector. They are speaking about the opportunities that are there. To me, it is a social media campaign that is one of the most powerful campaigns I have ever seen. It is yielding results.