Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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114. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated individual start dates of the 40 new apprenticeship programmes to be introduced under the Action Plan to Expand Apprenticeships and Traineeships in Ireland 2016 to 2020, in tabular form. [22281/17]

Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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119. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the details of the original 35 category 2 and 25 category 3 apprenticeship proposals identified by the Apprenticeship Council in 2015, but removed from the Apprenticeship Council's Report on New Apprenticeship Programme Proposals June 2015. [22286/17]

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 114 and 119 together.

The table provides a current status report on the 24 apprenticeship proposals that have been approved development funding by the Apprenticeship Council. The report sets out numbers on the 2 programmes that are currently operational and also indicative start dates for other programmes.

The first 20 on the attached list were in the original category one list arising from the 2015 call. Of the original category one list, two proposals in Commis Chef were merged and two welding proposals were also combined giving final category one total of 23. Three of these proposals in the areas of Travel & Tourism, Warehouse & Distribution Operative and Welding are not proceeding.

In late 2016 re-engagement with category two and three proposers took place and arising from that process development funding was approved for a further four proposals this year in the areas of Property Services, Retail Practice, Engineering Services Management & Manufacturing ICT Engineer. A number of other proposals, although not yet approved development funding, are proceeding and will shortly submit detailed development plans and an application for development funding to the Apprenticeship Council. These proposals are listed as “at stage 2” on page 24 of the Developing a National Apprenticeship handbook, which is available at .

Proposals for an apprenticeship in any occupation not listed on page 24 of the handbook will need to be made through the second call for proposals and this is how new apprenticeships will be introduced to meet the targets set out in the Action Plan to Expand Apprenticeship and Traineeship.

Proposers took part in the 2015 call on the understanding that details of their proposals would only be published at the point that they were approved to proceed. On that basis, I cannot give details of category two or three proposals other than those that appear in the handbook.