Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 18 January 2024
76. Deputy Mairéad Farrell asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science the work he is doing to ensure that current students and apprentices are retained within Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2287/24]
View answerWhat work is being undertaken by the Department to ensure that current students and apprentices are retained here? I ask the Minister to make a statement on the matter.
I thank the Deputy for raising an important point. As we all know, Ireland has one of the highest participation rates in third level education in Europe. Every year, the Higher Education Authority conducts a survey of graduates nine months after graduation. Over 70,000 graduates from the class of 2022 completed the survey to provide a really good picture of what graduates are doing in their early-stage careers. The survey has taken place each year since 2017 with the exception of the class of 2019, who were not surveyed due to disruption caused by Covid-19. In 2020, 75.9% of graduates were in employment nine months after graduation and 13.8% went on to further study. In 2022, 83% of graduates were in employment with 10.3% engaging in further study. This shows that the overwhelming majority of graduates are choosing to stay in Ireland after graduation and to work and do further study here.
In relation to apprentices, a key part of the apprenticeship system is the relationship between employer and the apprentice. As the Deputy knows, apprenticeships are undertaken through a contract of employment. Data is currently not collected in relation to this area for apprentices. The Deputy has raised a valid point, which I will pursue. The sense we have from engagement is that the majority of apprentices stay with the employer they train with for a period after they are fully certified. That makes logical sense but we could do with more data in this area.
One of the strengths of the further education and training model, including apprenticeships, is the link between education, enterprise and the needs of the economy. These courses are designed to focus on the needs of employers and industry developments. Therefore, trying to retain that talent is a significant priority for me and the Government. There are reasons to be encouraged when we look at the figures, and I am happy to share them. We see the overwhelming majority of graduates staying in employment in Ireland or going on to study in Ireland in the months after graduation. We monitor that year on year and have actually seen an increase in recent years.
Go raibh maith agat, a Aire. I would love to see the data. That would be fantastic. Did the Minister say 7,000 students took part in the survey?
It was 70,000.
That is interesting. I am sure the Minister is aware of the story, first broken by The Sunday Times, that over 21,000 Irish citizens have been granted visas to Australia, double the number recorded in the previous year. This will not come as a surprise to any of us because we see it in our friendship groups and neighbourhoods. With the number of people going to Australia, it feel like it did when I came out of college or did the leaving certificate in the 2008 period. According to The Sunday Times, between July 2022 and July 2023, 21,525 holiday permits were granted. That makes us the largest recipient per capita of this kind of visa, ahead of Britain, France and Germany. We keep hearing that the economy is doing well but very clearly something is going wrong for young people here that they feel there is no alternative to going to Australia. Of course, there will always be an element who want to go and travel, see the world and all that kind of thing, but when there is that level of an increase there is clearly something amiss.
I thank Deputy Farrell but I think the statistics paint a different picture. They are not my statistics but those of the Central Statistics Office. The Deputy will probably have seen that they were revised upwards during the Christmas period. They show the number of Irish citizens returning to this country significantly outstrips the number of Irish citizens leaving this country. There is a narrative out there, a statistically false one, that more Irish citizens are leaving the country than are coming back. The Deputy has not said that today. If we look at the CSO data for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, all of which is published and available, we see significantly more Irish citizens - tens of thousands more - came back to Ireland than left during that period. The figure was revised by the CSO relatively recently.
There can never be room for complacency. Right across the world there is a battle for talent. One of the biggest issues we experience in public services and private industry is the recruitment and retention of our talent. Therefore it is important that we continue our annual survey. The point about apprentices that the Deputy's question has brought up is valid in terms of how we can gain more data on that. I am very happy to share the information I have with her.
I am aware of that statistic. It was the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, who raised it with me. I do not think it is tens of thousands. I stand to be corrected on that. I will have to look it up. The reality is 21,000 young people went to Australia last year, which is a massive increase from the previous year. Obviously there is something amiss here. We are not in the age group where our friends who had left are coming back or hoping to come back and are trying to raise a family. Fundamentally, the housing crisis is having a severe impact on that. In recent years, I have been to countless weddings and a large number of those who got married some years ago are still living with their parents as a married couple because they have nowhere to go. They cannot get a mortgage if they have been abroad. They find it impossible to get a full-time permanent job. As a result, they cannot get a mortgage. They cannot get planning and they find the rents are very high. The Minister and I can argue the point about the numbers. I do not have the figures in front of me. However, we do have the figure of 21,000 and we know that is a doubling. We need to look at why so many young people are leaving and we need to try to deal with that.
I definitely do not want to argue. While accepting neither of us has the specific figures in front of us, let us also accept that both of us believe and know that the Central Statistics Office has produced figures that show that more Irish citizens have returned to the country than left it in the period 2017 to 2022.
That is because hundreds of thousands went away after the financial crash. The Minister is including those people.
Due to the fact that the economy has recovered under the management of my party in government for many years, people now have an opportunity to come back to their country to get a job. That is a good thing-----
There is no housing.
----but we can debate that on another day.
Deputy Farrell is not wrong that housing remains the biggest challenge facing young people in this country. We can have a debate, as we do in this House all the time, about what the best solutions are in terms of providing opportunities. The fact that we are now seeing about 500 people purchase their first home every single week, the highest figure we have seen in many years, is an encouraging sign. That we now have schemes in place to get a deposit and bridge the gap between what people can save and what they need to get a deposit is a good thing. It is important that we are going to do more on student accommodation. In my Department and the Department the Deputy shadows, the fact that we are going to make sure we continue to train more people to build homes is good. Some people will always leave the country and sometimes people will come back. More people are coming back than are leaving. From a graduate point of few, the HEA survey provides an insight into how many people go straight into the world of work and how many people continue on in education. I am encouraged that those figures increased between 2020 and 2022. I also acknowledge that we need to do more in terms of data around apprenticeships.
