Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

The answer to the Senator last question is that, no, unfortunately, they cannot. The application was made for a very specific cohort of workers who were made redundant from a company and had a redundancy notice applied to them. We could not have made an application on their behalf if we did not have that redundancy notice.

Anybody who was previously involved in the construction sector continues to have the opportunity to access what are generally excellent upskilling and training programmes. This will allow them to take their existing skills and reorient them somewhat in order to avail of opportunities arising in such areas as green energy, wind energy, the retrofitting of houses to make them more environmentally sustainable and so on. Any former construction workers, irrespective of whether they are out of work for some time or have only recently been made redundant, can access these training programmes.

We will not have the final figures for the numbers of interventions until we submit the final accounts for the scheme to the Commission, probably at the end of June. In respect of any employee who was made redundant from this cohort of 9,000 people, we can claim back 65% of the cost of any intervention we provided for them in the past two years, since 2009. This is because they are deemed to be applicants in the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund process. Any interventions we provided for them can be funded from the €35.7 million allocation. The Department estimates that some €20 million of this spend has already been allocated across this cohort.

One of the greatest challenges facing apprentices made redundant from the construction sector in the past two years is that many of them had not achieved their final qualification. Some were four fifths or five sixths of the way along the process, others even less. We have allocated considerable resources to engaging with them in order to give them the opportunity to complete their apprenticeships and attain a formal qualification. This will allow them to further their career in the State or perhaps seek work abroad. We will not know the final figures for the numbers of interventions or the amount we have spent until the final accounts and administration work are completed in the summer.