Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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591. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of apprenticeships there are in Ireland in each of the years 2021 to 2025, in tabular form. [66799/25]

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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592. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of apprenticeships that have been available in County Meath in each of the years 2021 to 2025, in tabular form. [66800/25]

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 591 and 592 together.

My department and I are committed to providing the best possible opportunities for apprentices in county Meath and across the country as a whole. To support this, government has invested significantly in developing and growing the apprenticeship system. In Budget 2026, I secured a further €79 million investment in apprenticeship delivery, raising the total budget to over €410 million - more than double what it was five years ago.

Apprentices are employees and are registered by their employers in the Education and Training Board (ETB) region in which the employer is located, not on a county basis. This means the apprentice may not necessarily reside in or be originally from that region. In the case of employers based in Meath, the apprentices they employ are registered to Louth and Meath ETB (LMETB). Given the above, it is not possible to provide the number of apprenticeships registered in Meath from 2021 to date in 2025.

The total number of apprentices registered with employers - both in craft and consortia - located in the LMETB region for each of the years 2021 to 2025 is detailed in the table below.

Apprenticeship programmes are offered nationally. This means that a person may be registered for any of the available programmes, irrespective of where in the state they reside.