Brendan Smith presses minister on apprenticeships, Susie and student supports

I welcome Minister's presentation of these estimates, and it's good that there's a 7.4% increase in the financial provision for your department this year. Could I say, Minister, I agree with Deputy Frank Feehan's observations regarding apprenticeships and the importance of them, and it's very good that the financial provision, again, for the apprenticeship budget has increased 83% in less than five years. That's a welcome measure. Minister, you cited the remuneration that's available to apprentices. I don't think that level of remuneration that the public at large believes that it's as good as what you cited there. I think there needs to be a better information campaign in regard to the necessary remuneration for young people going through their apprenticeships, and there needs to be some better information campaign done some way, and I'd hope you'd be able to do that. Minister, as you were, there's some concern among apprentices about going into the second phase of their apprenticeship, that there may be delays. Some apprentices were due to start second phase in September. Some people have not yet been notified whether that would commence or not. I think a reassurance needs to go out that there would be no undue delay in those apprentices being facilitated with the transition to the second phase of their apprenticeship. And it's very important that that message will go out as soon as is possible. Could I also say, Minister, with regard to Susie, again, I've heard you speak over the last few days, again, about that the eligibility limits have changed much for the better. And again, we need a better campaign in regard to encouraging people to take up the options if they qualify. The 10th of July is the deadline for initial application anyway, and I think if that can be put back a bit, and I think there may be a graduated application process, I'm not exactly clear, but there should be some campaign in encouraging people to ensure that they are availing of Susie if they're within the income eligibility limits. With regard to the cost of living measure, one issue, and I'm sure your officials would be aware of me raising over the past few years, I was very annoyed that students from our state, who were studying in the other part of our country, in our neighbouring jurisdiction, or in Britain, were denied that cost of living measure for three different years. Because it believes that the student who was studying in Belfast, or Derry, or in England, or somewhere else in Europe, that their parents or themselves should have been able to avail of that 1,000 euro cost of living measure. So, Minister, if there are measures in the future, we must ensure that students who are studying outside our state, be it in our neighbouring jurisdiction, in our own country, or be it abroad, that they are not denied any of those particular benefits. And I would sincerely hope that that will be addressed in the future. Again, Minister, I spoke to you on a number of occasions about the very welcome capital programme you have for the further education sector. I think over the past five years since your department was established, there has been a very welcome emphasis on the role of the further education sector, both in preparing people and upskilling them for jobs, or as a pathway to higher education as well. It has been a great success, and I'm very familiar, as you know, with my own institute in Cavantown from its early days. And we propose it as with your department in regard to the development of major additional permanent accommodation, developing a cottage of the future facility, and I sincerely hope that that will be progressed to the next stage as soon as possible. And again, one other issue in regard to skills, apprenticeships, in regard to further education, probably more has been done at higher education level, is the opportunities for cooperation, collaboration on a north-south basis. We have those opportunities, and I think we must drive it from our state's point of view, and we all know many years ago, I think there were more people, students from Northern Ireland and colleges here, than there may be today. We need that better student mobility, both north-south and south-north. And you take the two counties that I have the privilege of representing, two southern Ulster counties, Cavantown and Monaghan, like we're beside Enniskillen, we're beside it of the Northern Ireland towns, and there has to be collaboration between colleges of further education, which there is, but I think we need to even drive that more intensely, and have even deeper collaboration, and more cooperation. It exists at the minute, but it can be brought on to a higher scale, I think. So, Minister, I wish you well with your work, and I have no doubt that you will continue to give the department the good leadership that it needs, and I know that you're a person who likes to get out and meet the stakeholders, and listen to them, and deal with those issues. Thank you, Achahirleek. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, Deputy, and very, very, I think I agree with everything you say there. Just, I suppose, there's a number of points there. The eligibility limit, I've spoken about this a lot recently, the eligibility limit in this revision increases to 115,000 at the higher end, but every single threshold in the system increases by 15%. So, that's bringing more people than ever before into the SUSE system for different grants and different supports, and that's a significant, I think, increase, which I think you're right, Deputy, that there may not be full awareness of that. In fact, evidence by last year, 40,000 students were estimated to be eligible at the higher end of the income threshold. Of those 40,000, only 18,000 drew down the grant. That was for the student contribution grant, and I think there's a bit of work to do as a bit of analysis as to why that might be so. If there's measures that are available that aren't being available, why is that? So, I think that's an important piece of analysis. And it goes right across the board. So, everything in the system is moving up. Thresholds, grants, amounts, contributions from the state. And as things stand, there are 404 million in terms of student supports being paid out in this revision. And that's top of 1.7 million almost across the higher education piece, which includes, in some cases, fee stipends as well. But 404 million alone in student supports in this revision. The north, you've talked about in cross-border cooperation, just to make an observation, fees are higher in the north. They're 5,600, which is almost double the highest rate of fees here. Now, students from the public attending do have the students' SUSIE supports carried over. We do pay the SUSIE supports for them. And I take the point you make about the cost of living interventions. As I understand it, there won't be one this year, but I understand the point you make for previous years of whatever other measures are done, that that should be considered. I think that's a good point. In terms of the Cavan College of the Future, so I'm familiar with that project and you've raised it with me before, and I'm familiar with it. Cavan Monaghan College of the Future has cleared a preliminary business case, and the local ETB, Cavan Monaghan ETB, are now working on the next phase, which will include the appointment of a design team. So I think that's positive as it's moving forward. And you asked me before, and I'm happy to visit that site with you at a future date. I see that myself. I was in Cavan with you in college not so long ago in my previous role, and I think that's worth doing because I have been getting out and about as much as I can around the country, so I must put that on my list as well. And just on the Northside cooperation, I have attended the Northside Ministerial Council, met Minister Archibald, my office number in the Northern Executive quite recently, and I visited Derry. I was at their graduation of the first medical class just two weeks ago, and I visited Queen's in Belfast as well. So I visited the Magee Campus in Derry and visited Queen's in Belfast. And some of the issues around cross-border mobility, some of those had their origins and so there's a few technical issues as well. So, for example, the student from the North that was taking A-levels, even if they got maximum points on their system, didn't achieve 600 points in our system because there was a little bit of a dichotomy. So how that's being addressed and I recommend to Ashbaugh on this is that there's an additional course optional taken earlier in the term, which gives them a little points bonus so that they can get parity so that they're coming in. So if you take, put very simply, a straight A student in the North, a straight A student in the South, because three versus six didn't quite match. So we've addressed that. One other issue that's worth mentioning and I have been, I've mentioned this to the North, South Ministry of Council and elsewhere, one of the reasons, one of the other reasons, apart from that point's anomaly, is that typically, colleges in the South require a European language or other languages as a matriculation requirement. Traditionally, colleges in the North haven't, sorry, students in the North haven't necessarily taken European language as a subject for their A-levels or otherwise. So that matriculation requirement and there's perhaps wider issues there but subject choice and indeed even European integration. But that is an issue that's been raised by the colleges. Some Northern students applying may not have a European language and they therefore may not meet the matriculation requirements regardless of points. and there are a number of research collaborations also between Northside so I've made a number of submissions to the Shared Island Fund in terms of research collaborations and we can progress there. Some of which are up and going, some of which I hope to do more on. So that's, I think it's very key and the National Training Fund will commit funding to further education and apprenticeships in a big way and including, and you of course, the Calvin Monaghan project and the Calvin ETB as well. Thank you. Thank you Minister. Deputy O'Connell.