Almost 3,500 craft apprentices waiting over six months to start coursework

In terms of the 19,842 new craft apprenticeships registered between 2021 and 2023, just under 20% will fail to finish the course in the expected timeframe. File Picture: Domnick Walsh / Eye Focus LTD

Nearly 3,500 craft apprentices across Ireland are currently waiting longer than six months to commence the coursework portion of their apprenticeship, new figures show.

Some 3,347 people have been waiting for that length of time for the phase two section of their apprenticeship.

A further 95 people have been waiting more than six months for the phase four section, and 18 have been waiting at least that length of time for their phase six requirement, according to figures released to Sinn Féin’s Mairead Farrell by further education body Solas in answer to a parliamentary question.

The Cork and Dublin/Dun Laoghaire Education and Training Boards are reporting the longest waiting lists, with 409 and 474 people, respectively, having been waiting more than half a year for the off-site phase two section of their apprenticeship to commence.

The Department of Further Education said that a wait for phase 2 off-job training at an ETB training centre of between three and six months is considered “normal”.

“Those waiting six months or longer are termed as part of a backlog waiting for training,” said the department.

The news comes amid troubled times for the apprenticeship system, with nearly 3,400 craft trade apprentices having failed to complete their courses — for reasons ranging from dropping out to the apprenticeship being paused — over the past three years.

Those figures suggest that, in terms of the 19,842 new craft apprenticeships registered between 2021 and 2023, just under 20% will fail to finish the course in the expected timeframe — an unhappy statistic, given the importance of craft tradespeople to resolving Ireland’s housing crisis.

Some 7,320 apprentices are currently waiting some length of time for the beginning of their off-job training —– that is, the portion of their course not undertaken with their employer. Of those, 1,736 have been waiting for longer than 10 months.

The department said that the “rapid implementation” of a response plan regarding the backlogs seen by the National Apprenticeship Office has seen the six-month waiting lists reduce from 5,200 at the end of August 2023 to the 3,460 currently being seen.

Meanwhile, separate figures released to Ms Farrell show that the majority (58%) of electrical, carpentry, and plumbing apprentices who qualified in 2023 had taken five years to complete their course.

Apprenticeship courses are typically slated to last four years.

Solas will today appear before the Oireachtas committee on further education, where its chief executive Andrew Brownlee will note that the further education and training (FET) sector in Europe has grown by 17% since 2022, with around one in 10 adults in Ireland engaged in apprenticeships, construction skills schemes, or other FET last year.