Speaking to people in the farm machinery industry these days, you’d worry if anyone will be available to service the tractor next time it is due.

The 250 or so dealerships with a workshop in the country are losing their qualified mechanics to better-paying industries with more regular hours. Construction and haulage are back in business after the recession. Expanding pharmaceutical plants also need a growing number of maintenance staff with mechanical and hydraulics skills. Around 30 FTMTA members in the Cork area have reported mechanics moving to drug factories.

Dealers acknowledge that they’re having trouble to compete: their margins are tighter than those of Pfizer or booming construction sites, and they need their staff on the go day and night all summer.

The recent labour market has not been fair to machinery garages. During the recession, many chose to keep on their existing staff while other industries were shedding jobs and sending thousands of young people into emigration. For a lot of dealerships, this meant taking on fewer apprentices. Their highly skilled mechanics, used to working on tractors and harvesters filled with electronics, are now much more accessible to competing employers than the lads who left for Australia.

And the poor number of apprentices in the system means they won’t be replaced any time soon.

This year, around 40 apprentices are registered in each of two training courses: the degree-level apprenticeship run by Tralee IT and the FTMTA, and the craft course operated by Solas (formerly known as FÁS), which can be accessed without the Leaving Cert. That’s half the 150 the industry estimates would need to be in the system at any point to keep enough fresh blood coming into this ageing workforce.

To make matters worse, the FTMTA and Solas disagree on the format the apprenticeship should take – hence the two parallel courses. Previous attempts to bridge the gap have failed and the FTMTA is now planning to call directly on the Minister for Education to update the public course.