Apprenticeships: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-10 ============================================================ Paul Daly (FF), Agricultural Panel I also welcome our guests in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery and welcome the Minister of State. I think the last time I met her was when I was doing the whistle-stop tour of Ireland for the Seanad election and I stayed, while in the north west, in Sligo Park Hotel. She came in and she was working and it was late at night. I was there passing through and she was there working. I got here anyway. That is probably a bigger achievement for me. She was already here at that stage. I thank her and welcome her here this evening. I am like many others, I think everybody who has spoken so far, on the committee. We have done our report on apprenticeships, we have put in hours and hours of deliberations and we have a list of recommendations in our draft report. I think most people here went to those recommendations when they were doing their homework for today because I have them all, or most of them, here in front of me and they have all been mentioned by others. Some of them are important enough to rehash. I am of a vintage where apprenticeships were a big thing. You did your junior cert, or inter cert, as it was called at the time, and then you went off and did an apprenticeship. You served your time, hands-on on the job, and you will never learn anything like you will hands-on in any trade or any skill in life. However, then, of course, we had to better ourselves, or we thought we were bettering ourselves, and we gradually worked our way to a point where nearly everybody had to go to university and we left the trades, the apprenticeships and that earn-as-you-learn scenario behind us. We now have worked our way right back around and proven to ourselves, which we have to do on so many occasions, that the betterment was not that at all, that we actually had it right at the start. I am delighted to see that we are now going back to more and more of an earn-as-you-learn scenario. To hear the Minister of State say there are 78 programmes is unbelievable, and there is such a diversity. Where the real problem for us as educators to overcome will be is with the ones who have the fine skills where there will be very few jobs but we still have to train people. Because I have a love of horses, I think of the likes of training farriers. That has to be an apprenticeship. There has to be somebody prepared to take on the apprentice and somewhere they can go then to do the learning side of it while, at the end of the day, there will not be that many vacancies for qualified farriers in the country. I am just using that as one example. Another example I use where there is a major challenge for us is in the evolving modern technologies. You could go off to become a blocklayer a few years ago with your bag on your back, with a trowel, a lump hammer, a spirit level, a tape and a role of string in it, and you would become a blocklayer. Now you will need access, in my opinion, to 3D printers. As these technologies evolve, we need to be in a position, as soon as they become available, to train people and let people serve their time on how to use and operate them. The companies that are developing the technologies probably have a huge role to play in training operators and skilled workers to operate the new technologies. We need a lot more emphasis in second level education on career guidance teachers, as we used to call them, or counsellors, to promote apprenticeships. I welcomed the announcement of the Minister, Deputy Lawless, of the all-island accounting technologist apprenticeship, which the Minister of State mentioned. I am of that generation where apprenticeships are associated with blocklayers, bricklayers and electricians, but now we have accounting technologists. That this is one of the first moves on an all-island basis is ideal and brilliant to hear. It can only become more successful and I hope we will have more and more all-island initiatives such as this. In that regard, when we are designing and formulating our qualifications, one of the big things is to have international recognition, whereby we would recognise the apprenticeships of other countries and ours would be recognised by theirs. The world is a lot smaller now and people do a lot more travelling. International recognition is an important part. It is one of our recommendations in the report I mentioned. It is vital that apprenticeships be upgraded from level 6 to level 7 on the national framework of qualifications. That would give a lot more parity of esteem with the other alternatives of education. A long time ago, I spent some time in the education sector. I am a qualified metalwork teacher. As a councillor, I chaired the Longford-Westmeath Education and Training Board. I trained in Thomond College, which is now part of the University of Limerick. It does not exist any more, but it was a specific metalwork teacher training course. I did my leaving certificate in June and July, I went to college in October and the following February I was on four weeks' teacher training practice, standing in front of a classroom. This was six months, or a little more, after I had been on the other side of the desk in the classroom. While daunting at the time, it was hands-on working and being with fellow professionals in the staff room. I learned more in that staff room in those four weeks of the teacher practice and in the hands-on scenario than I ever learned from lectures or books. It is no different in any other trade. It is not just the skills; it is the people you are learning the skills with. Even if it is only the craic with the lads on the site, you still are actually learning. I am glad to see the apprenticeship back and long may it continue to improve and prosper. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-10