Months on, council still investigating ethics complaints against independent councillor
Two councillors have lodged complaints with the council against independent Councillor Gavin Pepper. But there’s been no conclusion yet to those processes.
“In the midst of a housing crisis, it is unacceptable that the apprenticeships … are being under-resourced,” says Unite regional officer James McCabe.
Unions representing construction workers and apprentices say the apprenticeship system isn’t able to meet existing demand for training college spots – let alone handle more.
“In the midst of a housing crisis, it is unacceptable that the apprenticeships, which are so critical to the construction sector, are being under-resourced,” said Unite regional officer James McCabe on Wednesday.
There is a shortage of funding for apprenticeships, he said.
Indeed, says Karl Byrne, a sector organiser in SIPTU. Solas – the state agency responsible for further education and training – doesn’t have enough funding in place to run the training college courses for apprenticeships for the rest of this year, he said.
The Department of Higher and Further Education has said it will find the extra funding so that no courses are cancelled, he said. “We need to ensure that that stays the case.”
Funding for this year’s courses isn’t the only barrier to building up apprenticeships, union representatives say.
Apprentices face long delays to qualify, and struggle to get training college places near where they live, says McCabe. And they live on unsustainable starting rates that are well below minimum wage, says Paddy Kavanagh, the general secretary of Connect Trade Union.
Meanwhile, researchers at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) have said Ireland needs 40,000 new construction workers to meet its housing and infrastructure goals.
Spokespeople for the Department of Higher Education, and for Solas, didn’t directly answer questions about any funding gap.
But both said the Department of Further and Higher Education increased funding for apprenticeship training from €142 million in 2019 to €339 million in 2025.
First-year apprentice registrations grew by 35 percent from 2019 to 2024, said the department spokesperson.
Growth is essential, they said. “Given the vital role apprentices play in supporting the construction sector and delivering on key Government priorities such as housing, retrofitting, and infrastructure development.”
Byrne of Siptu, says that right now there isn’t sufficient funding for training college places for apprentices for this year.
But, after the union flagged concerns that some apprentices – who have already faced delays to their training – could be delayed again, the Department of Further and Higher Education said that it won’t cancel any training dates, he says.
Any delays harm efforts to attract people into trades, because apprentices remain on lower pay scales until they get through their training, said Byrne.
“We do not want a situation where there are delays,” says Byrne. “It doesn’t present a good image.”
McCabe, of Unite, says the shortage of training places also means that apprentices from Dublin are often assigned a spot in a training college in another county, where they may struggle to find accommodation.
Courses should be available in major urban centres, he says. “More resources need to be dedicated to off-the-job training in large urban centres, so that apprentices do not need to travel long distances for the college phases,” says McCabe.
All these factors could put people off going into apprenticeships, he says. “An apprentice forced to travel, for example, from Dublin to Cork or Donegal incurs significant additional costs such as rent during an ongoing cost-of-living crisis.”
A Solas spokesperson said that craft training has seen increased demand in recent years – and has ramped up capacity in response.
In 2019, there were 5,271 new apprentices registered. Meanwhile in 2024, there were 7,113, she said.
A backlog of trainees also built up during the pandemic, she said.
“Increased registrations, allied to physical closures of training venues as part of the pandemic response, led to a temporary situation of insufficient capacity to meet growing demand,” she says.
It takes at least four years to complete a craft apprenticeship, says the spokesperson for the Department of Further and Higher Education.
The National Apprenticeship Office, which is overseen by Solas and the Department of Further and Higher Education, is monitoring training capacity versus demand on a trade-by-trade basis, says the Solas spokesperson.
But it is not possible to deliver all 25 programmes in all locations, she said.
Ireland needs around 80,000 new craft workers to deliver on its housing and infrastructure targets, says Paddy Kavanagh, the general secretary of Connect Trade Union, which represents most craft apprentices.
That’s what ESRI has said. Included in that number are 40,000 construction workers, its researchers have said.
Connect surveyed apprentices last year and found that more than half of those surveyed had their qualification delayed by more than one year.
The sector also won’t be able to attract the number of people needed on current payscales, said Kavanagh.
The starting rate for a first year needs to be increased, he says. It is currently between €7 and €9 per hour depending on the trade.
Kavanagh says that when he started his apprenticeship, most first-year apprentices were aged 15 or 16. Now, the average age of starting an apprenticeship is 21 or 22, he says.
The survey shows that most apprentices were aged over 20, and around one-third were over 24.
Many people in their 20s have rent or mortgage costs, says Kavanagh, and some have children. It isn’t realistic for them to live on current apprentice wage rates even for a year or two, he says.
“They need 80,000 more craft workers; they are saying they need to double the number of apprentices between now and 2030,” he says. “So there are currently around 30,000 apprentices in the system, and they want to get to 50,000 or 60,000.”
“They aren’t going to get there with the current pay structure,” says Kavanagh.