Unlike the misty-eyed impression of what apprenticeships used to be and the concept of the young fellow going into an apprenticeship after his junior certificate or just after the leaving certificate, the reality now is that many apprentices are coming into apprenticeships at a much older age. When the national minimum wage was introduced in 2000, it was determined that the apprentices should be excluded from the Act in recognition of the unique rates of such apprenticeships, and the fact that a long-established practice for determining rates, which adequately protected apprentices, already existed.
Key terms by TF-IDF across 3,330 words from 9 speakers. The summary quotes the highest-scoring sentences verbatim — nothing is paraphrased.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Robbie Gallagher and Seán Kyne; Níl, Senators Marie Sherlock and Mark Wall.
Party shown is the one each member held on 2023-05-03, frozen by a dated join — not their party today. The Oireachtas API publishes no date of birth and returns an empty gender field for every member in this period, so no age or gender breakdown is shown.