Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, for his attendance. Right across the House, most of us accept there is a massive and urgent need to build homes. There are over 12,000 homeless women, men and children out there, with thousands more living from week to week and month to month, not knowing where they are going to live next. That puts pressure on us all to ensure that homes are built. Right across this Chamber, there is also a recognition of the enormous importance of apprenticeships within our education system as a pathway to decent, secure, skilled work; as a means for employers to ensure guaranteed flows of skills into their sector and, therefore, to secure the future of their businesses; and as a way to change career without having to face the cliff edge of no earnings at all during the duration of the training period. We have to ask ourselves, if apprenticeships are so important for the reasons I have set out, why is it not so important that they cannot be paid the minimum wage? Either we accept apprenticeships are a fantastic way to earn and learn, with all the doors they open, or we do not.

Yesterday, I was in the Google Building and we listened to two apprentices, Gavin and Paul, who talked about taking up apprenticeships after spending many years in other sectors. They were very lucky to get a tech apprenticeship that was both fully and decently paid, but that is far from the experience of many others.

In bringing forward this Bill to ensure that all apprentices are paid the minimum wage, we are doing it for two reasons. The first relates to the housing crisis, which I think we can all acknowledge we are in, and the serious need to confront the construction labour shortage that exists. Second, and more broadly, if we are serious about ensuring a decent flow of skills into a whole variety of sectors beyond construction, and if we are serious about apprenticeships being a quality educational experience and not just cheap labour, then serious changes need to be made to the consortia model as it was introduced in 2016.

Last December, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science said that 50,831 workers need to be recruited into the construction sector by 2030, which is an expansion in construction employment of one third. That is a huge expansion but it is only to keep pace with the Government's own targets of 33,000 houses per year and, of course, we know the real housing need far exceeds that. Craft and other trades make up almost 80% of this proposed expansion yet what we are seeing at the moment, or certainly what we saw last year, is that the number in apprenticeships is falling, not rising. Last year, craft apprenticeship registrations fell by 439. At the current pace of craft apprenticeships, we will be lucky to get to just over half of the construction recruitment if those numbers continue.

For us, hope is not a strategy. We need to address the problems with apprenticeship take-up and completion. We know from talking to contractors that there are real issues with apprenticeship recruitment and particularly completion beyond year one and year two of the apprenticeship. We know from talking to those in the Connect Trade Union that apprentices are saying that they cannot afford to stay and that they are being forced out of the crafts because of the pay set-up. I thank those in Connect for sharing with us their experiences and the experiences of their members as to what is happening with regard to the construction workforce at the moment.

While we have a sectoral employment order in construction and it is extremely welcome, the reality is that in year one apprentices are paid €7.16 an hour, and in year two that goes to €10.75. We know the national minimum wage is already way below any semblance of what we might call a living wage, so how do we expect apprentices to live on what are grossly low levels of pay? Unlike the misty-eyed impression of what apprenticeships used to be and the concept of the young fellow going into an apprenticeship after his junior certificate or just after the leaving certificate, the reality now is that many apprentices are coming into apprenticeships at a much older age. Many have cost-of-living issues, they have dependants and they simply cannot afford to live below the minimum wage when there are much easier jobs out there, and particularly when we are in such a tight labour market.

When we look at some of the research in Germany and Australia, both countries that have very strong apprenticeship systems, we see there is a very high correlation between poor apprenticeship completion rates and low rates of pay. In reading all of the research and hearing all of the talk about apprenticeships in Ireland over the last two years, and in acknowledging there has been significant progress on apprenticeships, there has been very little or no emphasis on completion rates. That is something we need to really focus on if we are to try to ensure that we have the construction workers that we need. There are a number of parts to this Bill. First, employers need to reflect on the cost to them of constant labour shortages as a result of not training enough apprentices, plus the wasted costs when apprentices abandon after year one and year two. Second, we need to look at the structures for the delivery of training, and the decline in direct employment. There has been a massive drop in the number of employers taking on apprentices. There is a very fundamental and serious issue with regard to why we are not seeing the flow of apprentices through construction. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, we had around 400 to 500 employers taking on apprentices. That number has dwindled to 40 or 50 major construction employers in this country. It is fantastic that the major construction employers have very comprehensive apprenticeship programmes but if we are serious about increasing the overall number of apprentices, we need to look to the smaller employers too.

In terms of Government, we know the National Training Fund, which funds the off-the-job training or the educational part of the apprenticeship, is in surplus to the tune of around €1.5 billion. We need to think very seriously about why, in the midst of a skills shortage, the National Training Fund has such a massive surplus.

That brings me to the second reason we brought this Bill forward. As I said, there has been a major expansion in the number of apprenticeships since 2016, and that is very welcome. However, we have concerns about conditions of pay and about the use of apprenticeships as a source of cheap labour in certain sectors. In contrast to the crafts, as we all know, there is not mandatory pay for off-the-job training, and there is not a sectoral rate. I referred to two men earlier. If we are to make apprenticeships more attractive and ensure high rates of completion, we need to look at those conditions. We need to have a single framework for all apprenticeships, and we need to see pay determined at sectoral levels in conjunction with employers and workers' representatives, as opposed to being left to the whim of individual employers.

There have been proposals in recent months with regard to the need for construction labour to be imported from abroad, and for construction to be put on the critical skills migrant employment permit list. The Labour Party supports that but let me be clear about it. That needs to complement apprenticeships and a system of ensuring a steady and sustained flow of construction skills in this country, and not a be substitute.

The second key point is that we cannot fall into the trap of believing that importing skills from abroad is, in some way, a silver bullet. We know that apprenticeships in some other countries do not match the level we have here. Craft apprenticeships here tend to be Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, level 6 while in other countries, they can be level 5. It depends on the country. Second, we do not have a fast-track system for recognising those skills and crafts from abroad, and ensuring, in a very short period of time, that those workers can undertake an examination, and be brought up to speed. That is not only relevant to those coming from abroad, but it is particularly so for those who moved abroad from Ireland during the last recession and who went to Australia and other countries and may now wish to return. They too may have a difficulty, particularly if they did not complete their apprenticeships.

This is a very simple Bill, but we believe it is critically important that in addressing the labour shortage in construction, pay is one of a number of factors. We want to address that issue in our Bill and we very much hope the Government will support this. We all realise there is a crisis in construction labour, and we have to seriously confront how we go about fixing it.