Construction BUSINESS

The Minister for Education and Skills Richard Bruton and the Minister of State for Skills, Research and Innovation John Halligan has welcomed the opening of the Apprenticeship Council’s second call for new apprenticeship proposals.

Minister Bruton and Minister Halligan have called on employers to come forward with apprenticeship proposals. For companies, the skills that will be learned by these apprentices will be invaluable to their future growth plans. They will help exporting companies based in Ireland to scale their business, to grow their exports and to take advantage of the opportunities offered by a global economy. For the apprentice, they will be embedded in enterprises and will get the chance to learn skills and get hands on experience. It will give young people the opportunity to acquire applied, technical skills within a variety of sectors, and provide a very practical grounding which will stand to them as they move through their career and take advantage of promotional opportunities.

There are currently 27 craft apprenticeships in Ireland, in areas such as construction, engineering and the motor sector. Other countries have a much broader tradition of apprenticeship.  Germany has over 300 apprenticeships, across a wide range of sectors.

The recently published Action Plan to expand apprenticeship and traineeship in Ireland sets out how state agencies, education and training providers and employers will work together to deliver on the Action Plan for Education’s commitments on the expansion of apprenticeship in the period to 2020.  Today’s call is a key action in our plan to double the number of annual apprenticeship and traineeship registrations to 14,000 in 120 different schemes by 2020.

Building on a strong tradition of craft apprenticeships, the Apprenticeship Council has made significant progress since 2015 working with consortia in developing proposals made through the first call into new sustainable apprenticeships. 2016 saw the first of these new programmes with the launch of the Insurance Practitioner Apprenticeship in September and the Industrial Electrical Engineer Apprenticeship in November.

Thirteen further new programmes will get under way this year in various sectors such as medical devices, polymer processing, culinary and financial services. The second call, announced today, will call for more apprenticeship proposals. The closing date for new Apprenticeship Proposals is 1st September 2017.