Many may be fixated on upskilling in AI but Ireland is at crisis in another way, with the lack of practical skills. There are shortages in a whole range of craft areas, with a lack of builders, the lack of upskilling and training in building or construction, including plastering, plumbing, retrofitting, electrical services, carpentry and I could go on. These are all practical skills we desperately need. Unfortunately, Ireland moved away from this as a society. We started to look down our noses at training and apprenticeships in these vocational areas. There was an overprioritisation, with all young people having to have a university degree. That happened over the last couple of decades and Ireland is very much paying the price for it now. It was a very short-sighted approach. It is grand talking about AI and upskilling in this area but if you do not have plasterers, builders, plumbers, carpenters or retrofitters - areas in which young people can make a great amount of money - Ireland is going to be paralysed. We can see that in the delivery of our infrastructure at the moment. I am on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, as is Deputy McGettigan who is sitting here in front of me. We produced a 59-page document recently following eight meetings with a vast range of groups, basically to come up with practical recommendations for the next apprenticeship strategy for 2026-30. It examined how the system is working or, should I say, how it is not working. We looked at areas like the shortage of skills in areas such as housing delivery, infrastructure and climate transition. We need to put a great focus on resourcing Youthreach programmes and the ETBs. We identified many barriers to these apprenticeships in Ireland. There were financial barriers due to low pay, insufficient allowances and high up-front costs for tools; barriers for those with disabilities and low incomes; travel and accommodation issues in terms of long commutes and accommodation support if people have to live away from home. There were also employer-related barriers, especially for SMEs, with difficulties in having apprenticeships, training blocks for apprentices, the administrative burden and a lack of financial support for small businesses to employ apprentices. Other barriers identified were the lack of awareness and poor promotion in our secondary schools; a cultural bias in favour of the university pathway; the complexity of the system, with multiple bodies such as SOLAS and the ETBs; and the lack of a centralised system like the CAO, which we need to have. As regards access and inclusion, there were barriers for those in minority groups, childcare responsibilities and a difficulty in matching up employers with apprentices. There are 48 recommendations and I encourage the Minister of State to look through them. I could go on all evening on it, but it is a key area we need to look at because otherwise we are going to be lost as a country. We can talk all we like about AI but if we do not have the practical skills we will be lost.

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