Apprenticeship Programmes Dail Éireann — 2026-04-23 ============================================================ Eoghan Kenny (LAB), Cork North-Central I firmly welcome the developments in the public service apprenticeship model made by the Department of further and higher education. The Minister, Deputy Lawless, and I have had many exchanges on the role of apprenticeships in our public services. It is being focused on by the Government and I welcome this. It is something I am absolutely focused on. We all know of the difficulty with the number of apprenticeships our local authorities are able to take on. Will the Minister of State outline, in relation to the goal of having 750 apprenticeships annually, whether we have an idea where they will be working in our public service? Will they be located in our local authorities? I want to know where they will be located. I have made the point previously on the floor of the Dáil, and I will make it again, that local authorities are finding it ever more difficult to try to get their own workforce and are leasing out a lot to third parties. --- 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/dail/2026-04-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-23