Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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574. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the provisions he has put in place to enable those engaged in apprenticeships up until the lockdown and now out of an apprenticeship to continue their training. [34874/20]

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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The majority of the 18,179 apprentices who were registered with SOLAS prior to the 1^stMarch 2020 and who have not yet completed their programme remain registered to their apprenticeship at this time.Government initiatives during the Covid-19 crisis period are targeted towards retaining a relationship between employers and employees (including apprentices), this includes access to the Temporary Wages Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) where applicable. Employers who register a new apprentice between 1^stMarch 2020 and 31^stJune 2021 are also eligible to apply for a grant of €3,000 per apprentice, paid over two years). The apprentice population reached 18,800 at the end of October.

SOLAS are conducting periodic reviews of status’ from across the Education and Training Boards and Consortia to monitor activity and amelioration measures from across the 58 apprenticeship programmes during Covid-19. The impact of Covid-19 measures on apprentices has been largely dependent on sector with evidence of the use of shorter weeks/temporary layoffs of apprentices during the second and third quarter 2020 as well as a number of redundancies.

Most recently, of those updates received by SOLAS, 134 apprentices are known to have been placed in temporary layoff and 48 are redundant. In addition, 117 apprentices have their employment supported through their employer accessing the temporary wages subsidy scheme.

Authorised Officers in the Education and Training Boards are engaging with apprentices whose apprenticeship has been interrupted due to being made redundant to help them find an alternative employer so that they can continue their apprenticeship. In addition, in the case of some of the new consortia led apprenticeships such as Retail Supervision the consortia have been able to help apprentices who had been laid off to find alternative employers.