Linda Nelson Murray (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the issue of apprenticeships in the furniture industry. Some say that the great wind of 1839 was the start of the furniture industry in Navan, County Meath. The big wind occurred on the afternoon of 6 January and swept across Europe causing major damage and resulting in several hundred deaths. We had a plentiful supply of trees, the tools were there on the ground and we were ready to go. Fast forward to the 1960s and 1990s and furniture in Navan was huge. Upholsterers and cabinet makers were members of almost every family with 70 to 100 furniture makers in the town. Navan is only an hour from Dublin so people came in their droves to buy furniture. My dad was one of those manufacturers. My dad left school at 12 and had a choice of being an apprentice to be a cabinet maker or an upholsterer. His mam said he should be an upholsterer. The apprentices of the 1950s became the factory owners of the 1960s and the cycle repeated itself. At one stage out of a population of 6,500 in Navan, 1,000 to 1,200 people were employed in the furniture industry. These days, there are probably ten to 15 places still manufacturing, which is a far cry from the glory days. We see thousands of imports, particularly from Asia, coming into the country and it i very hard to get your favourite suite re-upholstered. Years ago, people invested in a suite and got it re-upholstered but sadly, we do not see much of that anymore. It is a dying trade, which is unfortunate. We all have to admit that is nothing as nice as getting furniture made locally so I call on the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to reintroduce an apprenticeship scheme for upholsterers before the trade dies completely. As a child, I recall the smell of the glue, the noise of the staple guns, the rolls of material and watching the craft of people at the upholstery benches and sewing machines and I would love to see that come back.