Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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2687. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to provide a breakdown of all craft apprenticeships and the number of students in each county who began their apprenticeships in each category in 2024; the number of students in each county that dropped out of their studies in 2025, by category, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44830/25]

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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In 2024, there were 7,113 craft apprentice registrations. Of these, in 2025, 123 have been recorded with a 'Left Trade Status'. Apprentices with “Left trade status” may choose to re-join programmes and finish their apprenticeship, or to transfer to another apprenticeship, or they may choose to "leave trade" after a period of pausing their apprenticeships. As such, an apprentice's "left trade status" may change from time to time.

Apprentices are employees and they are registered with SOLAS by their employer in the region the employer is based in and not where the apprentice is located. As such, apprentice registration figures are recorded by Education and Training Boards (ETBs) rather than by individual counties. Therefore, a county-by-county breakdown is not possible and the breakdown is provided on an Employer Region or ETB basis.

Table 1 below provides registration data and Table 2 shows the number of those apprentices who left their craft trade in each ETB in 2025 to date. It should be noted that this data represents a snapshot in time and was extracted on 22 August, 2025.

To protect each individual's data, where a registration or left trade number is less than five it is noted as <5.

ETB key:

• CD = City of Dublin.
• C = Cork.
• CM = Cavan and Monaghan.
• DDL = Dublin and Dun Laoghaire.
• D = Donegal.
• GR = Galway and Roscommon.
• KC = Kilkenny and Carlow.
• KW = Kildare and Wicklow.
• K = Kerry.
• LC = Limerick and Clare.
• LM = Louth and Meath.
• LO = Laois and Offaly.
• LW = Longford and Westmeath.
• MSL = Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim.
• T = Tipperary.
• WW = Waterford and Wexford.