Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Being demand-led in nature, there are no restrictions on the number of apprentices that can be registered. The current buoyant labour market, coupled with the recognition of apprenticeship as a valuable employment and skills development opportunity, is a welcome endorsement of this Government’s support of, and ambitions for, Apprenticeships in the tertiary sector

However, with great success come great challenges. Increasing demand on our apprenticeship system is being driven by three key factors (i) proportionate increasing overall demand on the tertiary sector, (ii) legacy backlogs from the Covid shut-downs, and (iii) growing demand in areas such as construction and housing.

The apprenticeship system is responding to a marked increase in demand over the past 4 years.

During 2019, circa 9,700 craft apprentices were being trained by ETBs and Technological Universities. This dropped to 7,000 in 2020 due largely to the impact of Covid, and returned to growth in 2021 with number of apprentices trained increasing to 7,300.

In August 2021, there were almost 12,000 apprentices awaiting off-the-job training. At the end of August this year, 7,578 apprentices were waiting for off-the-job training. Of these 5,257 apprentices were waiting longer than six months.

In light of these delays, there is a crucial requirement to align training capacity in ETBs with the continued strong demand for apprenticeships - with particular focus on apprenticeships linked to the construction sector - and also to put in place further measures which will add to capacity over the period required to respond to ongoing delays in apprenticeship training.

My Department has worked closely with SOLAS and the ETBs to continue to increase training capacity, resulting in 13,000 craft places delivered in 2022, a very important step in responding to the challenge of apprentices waiting to access off-the-job training. It is intended to deliver some 15,300 places in total in 2023.

In order to further accelerate and intensify delivery of increased apprenticeship training capacity, a taskforce chaired by my Department composed of representatives of SOLAS, the National Apprenticeship Office, the Higher Education Authority, Education and Training Boards Ireland, the Education and Training Boards, and union representatives has been established with responsibility to implement successfully a set of actions to address this very significant and important issue.