Housing crisis and State's failure to provide courses/qualifications for apprentices

Third year pipefitting apprentice here, i was a week into my third year before i started my first phase of college (phase 2) and that was only because they ran one extra class this year to speed it up a bit only for that i would be going in January having served 30 months at that stage.

Roughly 48 on the list ahead of us for the second college block (phase 4) and there is only one class been ran in the whole country of this phase. 12/14 a class and so far at best they are getting through two classes per year. At that rate it will be another 24 months before we are called to phase 4 (which is the case for the current class) that will mean i will have roughly 54 months indentured to a 4 year (48 month) apprenticeship at that stage.

We are the forgotten trade in this whole backlog there has been no effort to accomodate us whatsoever. Anytime its questioned the buck is passed onto someone else everytime. A few lads in our class worked alongside apprentice plumbers within their company who were signed up after them and its become fairly clear to us now that the plumbers are going to get qualified well before us despite the higher number doing that trade.

Be it the union, solas, apprenticeship ireland or the etb nobody can give us any answer the buck is just passed along the way and we are just reminded that the 4 years was only a guideline to the minimum time tied as an apprentice. Could you imagine the shitshow if student teachers were told hold on a minute that 4 year degree you signed up for, well yeah were not sure ehen youll finish it could be 6 years but who knows really.

The training centre we were in was a joke the instructor was out for 6 weeks plus during our 20 weeks and nothing would have been done about it only our class walked out one thursday evening to get the attention of the management in the centre. As a class we were good for attendance and actually had an interest in getting through it and getting on with our career which is hard done when we were dealing with that. Meanwhile you had a plumbing class in the room next to us who couldnt care less and the instructor walked out on them as he couldnt teach them yet those fellas will probably still be better off than us in a years time.

The majority of us were into our third year before finishing that phase which meant we would have been due the third year rate of our employers had we been on the job, however its one rule for solas as they were allowed to keep our rates at the second year rate during the phase which wasnt a huge amount with the cost of living these days it was very hard get by during it.

There is an awful lot of money being thrown into the spprenticeship programme at the minute and little to benefit the apprentices i reckon its just creating jobs for the boys mainly. A lot of money is being given as a grant to employers per apprentice maybe €1000/2000 year. That money is no good really to the apprentice themselves but it depends on the company youre working for too. If one of the big mechanical and electrical companies have 100 apprentices that means they can claim €200k from that pot surely that momey would be better spent on building training facilities instead.

Luckily enough my employer is decent and is paying me based on my years and not college however if this apprenticeship takes 6 years to complete i will be working the last two years of it at 90% of the rate i would get had i been qualified after my 4th year as assumed when startinh out.

Oh and need i mention a lot of us are looking at a one way ticket out of this country once we have our papers in hand.