Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I second the Government amendment.

I thank the Labour Party for tabling the Private Members' Bill. In particular I acknowledge the work done by Senator Sherlock in this area. I know from being on the committee with her that she has a real passion for this issue and has put an awful lot of work into it. She spoke about it yesterday at the committee. It is important to discuss fair pay for apprentices and the role they play. I see it in Clonmel and the number of apprentices that come through Tipperary Education and Training Board is significant. It is very important in an area where construction is significant. We need to have a serious discussion about it.

When we discuss this it is important that we are honest about what has happened in recent years in terms of the work done by the Government to promote apprenticeships. We have a plan in place to have 10,000 apprenticeships by 2025. I read Senator Wall's piece in a newspaper today. I do not doubt that he was being genuine in what he wrote but when we speak about figures we have to give a full account of all of them. It is true that apprenticeships have reduced by 300 this year to 8,200. It probably would have been helpful if Senator Wall had included the figures previous to this, where the figure increased from 5,300 to 8,200. Even in 2019, the figure was just over 6,000. There has been a vast increase in the number of apprentices coming through every year, albeit there has been a drop of 300. I cannot remember what the Senator said a few minutes ago but he essentially described this as shocking. It must be amazing then that we had an increase of almost 3,000 in the space of three years. We need to get to 10,000 by 2025.

We speak about construction as an area where apprenticeships are needed drastically and that is the case. Again, when we speak about figures we need to be factual. The figure of 166,000 vacant houses was quoted as supposedly outrageous. We need to give a full clear account of what the CSO figures state. Of the 166,000 houses that are vacant, 35,000 are vacant because they are up for rent, 27,000 are vacant because the owner has died and 23,000 are vacant because they are being refurbished. I agree that we should speak about this issue and it is very important to focus on it.

One of the challenges we have had over the past ten years, certainly in terms of construction, is that there were no apprenticeships in the sector between 2010 and 2012. We are where we are now because of this. We need to make sure we increase the numbers. If we are going to talk about what the Government has or has not done, we need to give the full picture. When we speak about it this needs to be outlined. I thank the Labour Party for tabling this important Private Members' Bill for discussion.