Negotiations are under way between the Republic and Northern Ireland to set down common rules governing the training and registration of apprentices on the island, the Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless has said.
Currently, apprentices in both jurisdictions have sharply different training regimes, which those in the Republic doing their training in blocks – spending months in college, followed by months in factories.
In Northern Ireland, apprentices spend a few days each week in colleges and the rest of the working week with their sponsoring employer, the Minister told the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly.
However, there are hopes that a common training system for one speciality “to start with” could be signed off at a meeting of the North-South Ministerial Council, which takes place in Farmleigh House in Dublin on Friday, he indicated.
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Spending this year in the Republic on apprenticeships will rise to €400 million, the highest-ever level. In all, it will cover 77 different courses, the Minister told The Irish Times after his address to the parliamentary assembly.
“I’m looking to grow apprenticeships into newer areas, right across the professions, legal, educational, medical, and healthcare,” he said. “The key point is that apprenticeships should not be seen as second best,” he went on.
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Meanwhile, people in Northern Ireland should encourage their children to come south to universities, rather than going to Britain because there is a greater chance that they will go home after qualifying.
Four thousand Northern Irish students start courses in universities in Britain each year, rather than staying in Northern Ireland, or going south – and a significant majority of those who do never return to work in Northern Ireland.
The “conversation to have” with many in Northern Ireland, especially those from a unionist persuasion, is that “if a student comes south, they’re not lost in a way that they are if they go to Britain.
“What I hear a lot is that a student from the North who travels to the Republic to study is far more likely to go home at the weekend, and to gravitate home after qualification. They may work in the south for a while,” he said.
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“Anecdotally, if a student from the North goes [to Britain], works in Manchester or Liverpool, London, or wherever many of them won’t actually come back across the Irish Sea, so that’s a loss to the island,” the Minister declared.
Students from “all traditions, backgrounds and persuasions” in Northern Ireland should strongly consider a third-level education in the Republic “as an equally valid and attractive option” than going to British colleges.
“I think that they might be pleasantly surprised with the opportunities both educationally and economically and culturally that present from that. I think there is perhaps a degree of cultural reluctance,” he went on.
Previous Central Application Office rules made it extremely difficult for Northern students to qualify for places, since they could not meet points requirements even if they got top marks in A Levels because they take only three subjects in their final exams.
