Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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878. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development to outline the internships, apprenticeships and graduate schemes run by her Department and public bodies under the aegis of her Department. [35492/23]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My Department fully supports the roll out of the Public Service Apprenticeship Recruitment Plan and will engage with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science in relation to the roll out of apprenticeship programmes within the Department.

DRCD places a lot of importance on programmes which can provide pathways for people with disabilities and those in marginalised groups to join the workforce. For example, the Department has recruited two WAM (Willing Able Mentoring) graduates who will start their placement with DRCD on 4^thSeptember 2023. This is a graduate programme for people with disabilities. The Department is also engaging with colleagues in the Department of Justice in relation to the Traveller and Roma Internship Programme for the Civil Service.

There are 4 agencies under the aegis of my Department: Water Safety Ireland (WSI), Pobal, the Western Development Commission (WDC) and the Charities Regulatory Authority (CRA).

Pobal works in partnership with the National College of Ireland (NCI) to offer professional work experience placements to Transition Year and Leaving Certificate Applied students in a number of disadvantaged schools based in the Dublin North East Inner City area. This provides 4th and 5th year students with high quality 1 – 2 week work placements.

In January 2023 the WDC hosted a BA Government: Politics, Economics and Law student placement from the University of Galway (NUIG) for 5 months.

There are no internship, apprenticeship or graduate schemes currently in place in Water Safety Ireland or the Charities Regulatory Authority.