Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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15. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the status of the implementation of the action plan to expand apprenticeship and traineeships in Ireland 2016 to 2020. [31570/17]

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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In January this year we launched the Action Plan to Expand Apprenticeship and Traineeship in Ireland 2016-2020, which sets out how state agencies, education and training providers and employers will work together to deliver on the Action Plan for Education commitments on the expansion of apprenticeship and traineeship in the period.

Last year we saw the first of the new apprenticeships developed by the Apprenticeship Council with the launch of the Insurance Practitioner and the Industrial Electrical Engineer apprenticeships. Last month three further new apprenticeships got underway, two in the medical devices area and a polymer processing apprenticeship. Subject to successful validation, a further ten programmes are scheduled to get underway later this year in various sectors including hospitality, accounting and financial services.

A key commitment set out in the Plan for this year was the issuing of a second call for proposals to refresh the pipeline of proposals already established through the first call. The second call issued on 4 May and will remain open until 1 September.

As well as developments in new apprenticeships, registrations in the craft trades are rising as the employment and economic situation improves. In 2016 there were 3,742 registrations which represents a significant recovery since the crash. This year the upward trend continues with registrations at the end of June of 2,200 which is almost 40% ahead of the same period in 2016. Registrations in the craft trades are predicted to grow to 5,587 over the period to 2020.

A steering group, chaired by SOLAS with representatives from all key stakeholders, has recently been established to examine ways of relaunching existing traineeships and also developing new career traineeships. To date six new traineeships have been developed.

A lot has been learned in the expansion project and I am confident that we now have a clear process with strong governance to allow the efficient development of new apprenticeships and traineeships.