John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to address the issue of apprenticeships. I call for a debate about them to acknowledge the really important work the Minister, Deputy Harris, is doing on them and to have a discussion about how we can make them better. I am raising this because over the weekend, I was out knocking on doors in my home town of Dundalk. I met an individual who is a tiler and that person outlined to me how there are currently no apprenticeships in tiling. We have apprenticeships for virtually every career going and we want to have 10,000 apprenticeships every year as part of our strategy, yet we do not have a dedicated apprenticeship for tiling. This is a very important issue and something the Minister, Deputy Harris, should look at introducing. I hope to perhaps arrange a meeting between him and the National Tiling Association of Ireland to figure out how we can make this an apprenticeship. We have an excellent apprenticeship hub in Dundalk that is churning out a huge number of apprentices. The key fact is apprenticeships are the way forward. Not everyone needs to go to college and not everyone needs to have a college degree. People can have an equally good career earning more money in most situations as a highly-trained and highly-qualified apprentice. We must ensure every position has a route for that and that is why tiling would be a very worthy apprenticeship to have and which the Minister and the Department should introduce. I would welcome a debate at some future point about apprenticeships, the key role they play in our economy and society and how we can make that role even better.