Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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864. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if his Department would consider revising supports for post-2016 apprenticeships to assist small business employers to take on apprentices; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33563/23]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The ‘Action Plan for Apprenticeship 2021-2025’ sets out new ways of structuring, funding, and promoting apprenticeships to make apprenticeship accessible to employers and learners. The Plan seeks to deliver on a target of 10,000 apprenticeship registrations per annum, across a wide range of programmes, by 2025.

The Action Plan is based on feedback from enterprise, the education and training sector and apprentices themselves, among others, and we have listened to the issues and concerns raised.

The role of employers is central to apprenticeships and that is why we are driving supports, both financial and non-financial, to encourage and sustain their engagement.

The introduction in 2022 of the Apprentice Employer Grant of €2,000 per apprentice per annum was a significant deliverable under the Action Plan for Apprenticeship 2021-2025. Its introduction means that, for the first time, employers of all apprentices will now have access to financial support, either through direct payment of allowances to apprentices or through this employer grant. In this way, employers of all apprentices will have some of the cost of the apprenticeship defrayed, promoting engagement with the non-craft programmes and balancing Government priorities in terms of meeting strategic skills needs through targeted interventions. It will also encourage more employers to engage with a wider range of apprenticeships and help to encourage the development of new programmes.

The grant provides financial support from the State to apprentice employers of one of the 44 apprenticeships that have been established since 2016 and do not attract payment of off-the-job training allowances. New apprenticeships introduced in 2023 and subsequent years will also be included in the grant scheme.

€7 million has been allocated to the Apprentice Employer Grant for 2023. As of the beginning of June 2023, 2047 applications had been received, 1192 of these applications paid to date, in the sum of €2,425,000.

Any change to the amount of the Apprentice Employer Grant will be considered as part of the overall Estimates process.

The gender-based bursary of €2,666 is also available for those who employ apprentices in the minority gender on any national apprenticeship programme with greater than 80% representation of a single gender. It is an expansion of the ‘female bursary’ available to craft apprenticeship employers prior to 2022 and there are currently 41 programmes which meet the criterion.

Employer feedback during the consultation process of the Action Plan highlighted that non-financial supports were particularly important for SME employers. Recognising this, supports being put in place include:

• The National Apprenticeship Office will link potential consortia members, education providers, and supporting consortia members and/or provide supports to build in-company training capacity.
• Sector-specific supports to be delivered through apprenticeship consortia to support SME employers.
• A development plan is to be delivered for a user-centred apprenticeship management system to simplify employer participation within and across apprenticeship.
• The removal of legislative barriers to the development of apprenticeship programmes in professions, enabled by the approval of the Oireachtas of the Higher Education Authority Bill, 2022, will widen the scope for new apprenticeship programmes in an expanded range of sectors.