Learning on the job: apprenticeships offer options for workers and employers

“When you’re doing something you love, everything just changes,” says Molly McGauley, an apprentice electrician with Irish Rail.
At 17, McGauley might be described as something of a throwback – a teenager who struggled a little with the more academic side of school and left before her Leaving Cert with the intention of getting herself a trade. Many apprentices these days are older, some starting college before realising it’s not for them, some working for years then resolving to acquire the skills required to make a better living.
McGauley stands out, too, for being so young and, of course, for being a woman, one of just eight in Irish Rail’s intake of about 50 apprentices across a range of crafts, all of them traditionally dominated by men as evidenced in the intake of 4,071 apprentices in traditional crafts across the State so far this year, with just 84 being women.
She is a natural, though, says her manager, Irish Rail’s apprentice development executive, Conor Doolan.
“You know by their hand movements, you know by their enthusiasm, you know by the way they’re approaching things, and Molly took to it like a duck to water from day one,” he says.
Irish Rail got 2,300 applications for its 50 training places last year, 3,400 the year before that and when they open the apprenticeship centre at the works in Inchicore to schools each year, “the place is swarming”, Doolan says.
Interest may be driven by the knowledge that most of the mainstream craft trades are in high demand across the construction, manufacturing and other sectors. The training is also intended to be structured in such a way that those who come through it can upskill in future years to future-proof themselves.
McGauley arrived via the Technological University Dublin Access to Apprenticeship programme, a 12-week course that allows participants try their hands at a range of trades and meet companies operating across a wide number of sectors.
She had, she says, a decent idea of where she was headed since “tipping away” with her grandfather in his garage as a kid and having a feel for the work.
“That and woodwork technology was my favourite subject in school. So it all kind of led me towards working with my hands,” she says.
“It comes quite naturally to me, even when I was in school where I would have found some of the other stuff difficult. I’m dyslexic as well, so that obviously makes things more difficult. But once I started the electrical, I just had a thing for it, I just found my love in it.
“There’s a good bit of theory, which can be tough, but it’s so different to when you’re in school because it’s what I want to do so obviously I’m going to find it more interesting.”
McGauley talks about the potential, at least, for her to stay with Irish Rail all her working life and Doolan believes it will be an option, one of a range of good ones likely to be open to her given the skills she will have.
“If you’re in this business, knowledge is key. And if you invest time, money, effort into people, you want them to stay. You’re sending them on courses, you’re training them to do bespoke work on trains. You don’t want to let them go after four years,” he says.
Still there himself more than 25 years after he completed his own apprenticeship, Doolan says the potential for progression is “almost endless”.
“They start at the very bottom then upskill and become tradesmen, supervisors, managers, right up to CEO,” he says, pointing to current Irish Rail chief executive Jim Meade, who started out on the engineering side of things.
McGauley certainly has time on her side in terms of developing a career but for the moment she might happily settle for the money that will come with qualifying, at about age 20.
As a first year apprentice, the money is not bad, she suggests, for someone like herself, living at home with her family but she acknowledges the challenge it must present for some of the colleagues that started the same time as her last year, many of whom are in their 20s and 30s.
The union agreed rate for the majority of first year apprentice electricians is €9.16 an hour, or about €18,500 while those who have just qualified would earn about €53,000. Rates at Irish Rail are a little different due to other staff benefits.
Unions that represent craft workers, including the largest one in the sector, Connect, see this shift in demographics – one that is often referenced, even celebrated by politicians and policymakers – as a key reason for increasing rates at least to the level of the national minimum wage. At present, only apprentices, the youngest workers and family members in a business are excluded.
The average age of somebody starting an apprenticeship these days is over 21, says Connect general secretary Paddy Kavanagh, with most firms wanting those they take on to have at least a Leaving Certificate. Many others take slightly scenic routes before setting out to learn a trade.
“By the time apprentices finish their training, 11 per cent will have a child,” says Kavanagh, freshly armed with data from a recent survey of his union’s apprentice members, the final results of which will be published at its conference in Portlaoise next week. “About 3.6 per cent will have a mortgage and around 16 per cent will be renting. You don’t want to be trying to do that on the minimum wage.
“So the profile of the apprentice has completely changed. But we’ve got people leaving again because they can’t afford to live on the wages and they can earn more working in their local supermarket.”
Connect member Stuart Lawrence, who recently qualified as an electrician at the age of 44, told The Irish Times he could only do it because his partner had a good job and his employer, Dublin-based contractors Apollo, for whom he had previously worked as a general operative, had been very supportive.
“It was tough at times but worth it all,” he said of the process. “It’s a different experience when you’re not coming straight into it from school but I’ve loved it and I really like the work now.”
He said he still struggled with the provisions made for travelling, though. Kavanagh points to weekly accommodation allowances of €69.90 and daily subsistence rates of 80 cent for the periods away in colleges that can comprise a part of the process as other examples of how the financial end of things have fallen badly behind the times.
Kavanagh is concerned, first and foremost, with apprenticeship programmes relating to the traditional craft trades in which his union has long been involved but he is also a member of the State-backed National Apprenticeship Alliance, a body comprising more than 20 representatives of various stakeholders including business groups and training bodies.
There are about 25 areas of craft apprenticeship programmes relating to electrical work, pipe fitting, plastering and the like, and the union represents people in most of these. Standards of training, he says, are very high and internationally recognised as such.
The range of available apprenticeships has grown hugely in recent years, with the National Apprenticeship Office overseeing a substantial increase in the number of courses available since its establishment in 2022 by Solas and the Higher Education Authority.
There is significant enthusiasm for this growth at the highest level of Government with Taoiseach Simon Harris having been keen to publicly champion the expansion while in his previous role as minister for further and higher education.
“It’s like the country got nearly a bit too snobby or elitist when it came to education,” he said last year. “It all became about going from school to university, and not actually recognising that there’s a great alternative path for lots of people … but also that there are people who want to learn and earn at the same time.”
He spoke then about the need to grow numbers in traditional areas as part of the wider Government effort to address the housing crisis but also about the potential to open up many new career paths to people who didn’t go to university. He also spoke of the need for the public sector to hire and train more apprentices, something Kavanagh believes is an imperative if the health service, local authorities and State agencies are not to suffer an acute skills shortage in the coming years.
At the last count, there are more than 50 apprenticeship programmes outside the traditional core crafts, taking in areas as diverse as horticulture, hairdressing, accounting technician, bar manager, cybersecurity, auctioneering and property services, recruitment executive, retail supervision and sales.
Apprenticeships in advanced manufacturing engineering (Level 8), digital marketing (Level 6) and software solutions architecture (Level 9) will be added to the list this year while 19 more are in development and a further 29 are at the consultation stage.
National Apprenticeship Office director Mary-Liz Trant believes the scope for further expansion is vast with apprenticeships having the potential to provide many thousands more people with alternative routes into attractive employment.
The expansion thus far has been much trumpeted on bus shelters, in online adverts and elsewhere, but the growth in participation remains relatively modest. About 9,000 people started apprenticeships in the past year and about 27,500 are in the system, of which 23,115 are doing craft trades.
“The numbers have started small but they are growing,” says Trant in relation to the numbers on the newer programmes. “We passed the 4,000 mark last year and our expectation is we’ll pass 5,000 and it’ll keep growing.”
She points to some of the glowing testimonials that come back from employers regarding the ability of the apprentices and the quality of the training, with many comparing both favourably to the third level equivalents, but the numerical disparity remains enormous, for now, she acknowledges.
“What are there? One hundred-and-forty-thousand higher education students in the country? And there’s probably about the same again in further education. So the apprenticeship system is tiny in comparison … 10,000 registrations, 27,500 of a population. It’s like one biggish university,” she says, you know.
“But I think there is both a big opportunity and a big need for us to really start to ramp up those numbers. I don’t think doubling the number of registrations to 20,000 is unreasonable or unrealistic providing, of course, there is the investment and the all important willingness of employers to take on apprentices.
“But I do think that is there because the feedback we get from employers is really positive.
“They really like the kind of diversity they get through apprenticeships, they really like the fact that people are contributing very quickly and learning at the same time and they really like that if they want to keep their apprentices, they tend to be able to, because apprentices tend to want to give back for at least two, three years after they finish their qualification.”
On the craft side, there have been issues with delays caused in some areas due to capacity constraints at the classroom stage of the process but some €200 million in being invested on improved infrastructure and resources and Kavanagh accepts progress is being made with just four apprenticeship programmes currently taking more than the prescribed four years to complete.
He is concerned about the new industry or “consortium”-led model for establishing and running apprenticeships and the threat it might pose in some areas, both in relation to training standards and pay. In sectors like hospitality, in which so many workers are paid the national minimum wage or not much more than it, he suggests the exemption in relation to apprentices might make a lengthy period of training for employees seem rather attractive to employers.
He fears the existing high standards in the craft areas also might come under threat too as, he says, they have in the UK.
Trant is adamant the system is robust and the threshold for establishing new apprenticeships high and insists there is no evidence of abuse.
Apprentices in some areas, like financial services, are starting their training on more than €30,000. “We’re in a full employment economy; if employers want to attract people, they know there has to be a good offer.”
As companies adapt to the requirements and mechanics of the system, including the need for mentors et cetera, the range of those options, she suggests, will only get better. For the time being, though, the majority will still be learning trades that have been around a long time.