Tomorrow, we will see the threats becoming real. In this House, we watched aghast as Boris Johnson and the Brexiteers prorogued parliament, when they suspended the people's assembly, denying that parliamentary procedure could take place. We watched in horror on 6 January 2021 when the Capitol rioters stormed Washington DC to stop the election results being ratified. We never thought we would see it in this House. We never thought we would see it in our own democracy. How apt it is that, on April Fools' Day, the peo…

We are talking about eight minutes of speaking time.

Across the floor, we see three groups. We see the "Shout 'em down Shinners", yet again agitating, barracking anybody or anything that stands in their way. I fundamentally believe they cannot accept the outcome of the election. They could not accept the outcome of the one before that either-----

-----because, in 2020, they went on a world tour proclaiming that they had actually won the election despite the fact that they did not command a majority of the House. They lost the next election in 2024. The "most effective Opposition history the State" - it was certainly the most hyped Opposition history of State - also had the greatest drop in support in the history the State of any Opposition party when it fell by 5.5 percentage points, the greatest in half a century.

We move on to Sinn Féin's junior partners on the benches beside it and we will look at the Labour Party-----

-----which is once again in thrall to a militant tendency that has retaken the Labour Party,-----

-----a party that was rooted in principle but ran away from government. At the first opportunity before an RTÉ microphone when the last votes were still being counted, the Labour Party declared it wanted nothing to do with government.

What is the point in going before the people with the manifesto if you have no interest in implementing it?

Then we have the "Social Media Democrats". As its own recently resigned member-----

As its own recently resigned member, David McGinn, said recently, it is a fundamentally unserious party. Those are not my words, but his. This is a serious crisis and we need serious players. The Government provides that seriousness.

That is why the Deputy is in opposition.

Ag insint bréag.

I thank the Deputy for her question. At the outset, I want to challenge the characterisation of "unfit for purpose". That is a strong phrase and is not one that was reflected in the parliamentary question as tabled. I do not believe that is true or fair to the system. There have been backlogs. Those backlogs are being worked through, for sure. For context, there has been a strong growth in demand for craft apprenticeships in recent years, which reflects a booming construction sector, with yearly craft registrations…

Let us consider the result of the measures I spoke about, the additional €67 million, the subsequent €77 million, the additional 110 instructors and the 80 instructors converted onto different types of contracts bringing an additional 190 instructors into the system. This has meant that craft training places have increased by 43%. That brought places from 5,600 at the end of 2023 when the backlog was identified to more than 8,000 places in 2025, that is, in the current year. The Deputy mentioned people waiting for …

I thank the Deputy. A review is ongoing across the whole sector. There are many different types of apprenticeships now. There are the craft apprenticeships, which are related to construction skills, there are climate skills and apprenticeships for accounting technicians and digital marketing - and my Department has a number of staff working in that apprenticeship - so it is very much a broader and more diverse sector and spectrum that might traditionally have been the case. They all play important roles. With regar…

I believe there is another question.

I do not mind taking them separately either. I am in the hands of the Acting Chair.

I appreciate that.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 2 and 5 together. The programme for Government does indeed commit to reducing the student contribution in a financially sustainable manner over the lifetime of the Government. As part of the cost-of-living packages over the last three budgets the student contribution was reduced by €1,000 per annum on a temporary basis at a net cost of circa €99 million per annum. These measures were in response to particular cost-of-living challenges arising at the time and were not intended to be …

Deputy Boyd Barrett asked about the temporary reduction. It was a temporary reduction; that is the point. It is important that we put it on a more sustainable, long-lived, permanent track, and that is part of the consultation I intend to hold with students, student bodies, stakeholders and universities to understand what would be a more holistic, sustainable formula to meet the cost of education for students and their families. I appreciate that Deputy McGettigan said I am bamboozling her with figures, but 66,600 s…