Combining the skills of tradesman and trader

Apprentices

Apprentice population: 20,893 Carpentry apprentices: 3,744 In all, 56 per cent of apprentices have sat the Leaving Cert. (Figures supplied by FAS)

Training

There are seven phases of training with phases one, three and seven on-the-job and phases two, four an six off-the-job. The usual length of training is four years.

Entry requirements

You must be at least 16 year of age on the commencement date of your apprenticeship. You must have at least grade D3 in any five subjects in the Junior Cert or equivalent or have satisfactorily completed a FAS pre-apprenticeship course. You must also pass a colour vision test approved by FAS.

As a schoolboy, Stephen O'Gorman took it as read that he'd go into business for himself one day. His father and his brother are both self-employed. At school - Grange Community College, Donaghmeade, Dublin - Stephens' favourite subjects were woodwork and metalwork, so when it came to thinking about a career, Stephen had no problem. He decided to go the woodwork route.

"I love working with my hands," 27-year-old Stephen explains. "I'd done work experience in a number of joinery shops and enjoyed it." He left school at 16 and went straight on to a FAS course at its training centre in Finglas, where he studied carpentry and joinery.

"I was very lucky that I managed to get on the course - someone had dropped out and I got the place. I don't know what I would have done without it. It was very hard work but I found it very interesting. You were doing something different every week and I got to use a lot of heavy machinery, which I enjoyed."

When the one-year course finished, Stephen went to work as an apprentice for a northside joinery company. "There were only a small number of people there, so I got to do everything that had to be done, which was a great training," he recalls. The company made stairs, doors and shopfronts. During his three years with the joinery company, the young apprentice attended DIT Bolton St one day per week. "I did all the exams - City and Guilds and that - that you need to pass your apprenticeship," he says. Just as he was coming out of his apprenticeship, the company went into liquidation and Stephen was faced with looking for another job or starting out on his own.

It was 1993, and Stephen was just 21. Luckily, his brother-in-law, John Moore, a carpenter, had just returned from a stint in England and was eager to set up with him in business. In carpentry, it's still possible to set yourself up in business with relatively little funding. "We didn't have any machinery or a premises, so all we did was site work. We did a small amount of advertising and got ourselves listed in the Golden Pages. We had a few contacts ourselves and we managed to get plenty of work. The economy wasn't so good then, but we were able to get by and get a wage. We'd go out to pubs and shops and fit them out. We always worked on the site."

Eventually, however, Moore and O'Gorman Joinery Ltd, got itself a small workshop in Manor St. "We started buying machines one by one. We had to borrow money to do this. We took on two apprentices, who had been trained through Finglas." Once they got the workshop set up, their work changed enormously. "We could manufacture our own materials - kitchens, wardrobes, stairs and doors - we didn't have to buy them off other manufacturers."

The work also changed in that they were now employers and had to pay rent and wages. "It wasn't too bad, though, our outlays were small." Luckily, the work continued to flow and Stephen found that his customers were coming back, time and time again.

Just recently, the company has moved to much larger premises on the Turnpike Industrial Estate, near Ballyfermot, which they have purchased. The company has expanded and now employs four apprentices and they've taken on a French polisher. A new extraction system is soon to be installed to take out the fine dust when the polisher is working.

These days, Stephen spends his time in the workshop on production while John goes out to do the fitting. "I'm a joiner," Stephen explains. "John trained as a carpenter. I hate leaving the workshop. Fitting doesn't interest me. I like making things. You know exactly what you're going to be doing and what's involved. You can plan everything out. We specialise in hotel, bar and office furniture. We work in teak, mahogany, maple, beech and cedar wood. Just now, white oak is the most popular wood for office furniture."

Stephen admits that not every job is exciting. "It's different when you get something to do that's really difficult. That's a challenge - and it's really interesting."

Stephen reckons that up to to two-thirds of the company's work is now commercial. Thanks to the economic boom people have more money to spend and the company's order book is now filled up to three months ahead. Stephen is clearly delighted with his career choice and says he'd recommend carpentry/joinery as career to anyone. One of the difficulties of the current boom, however, is that it's difficult to find good people - apprentices who are committed to the work and who want to learn. "But that goes for everything in this industry," he shrugs.

For the future, Stephen hopes to grow the company to employ eight apprentices. "It's better to take in young people and train them to do things the way you want," he says. Does he think of himself as a businessman or a joiner? Both, he says. "Working for yourself is great. If you put in the extra effort, you get the rewards. We don't want to grow too big. We try to restrict our working hours to 8 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., although we do longer hours if there's a panic. I wouldn't want to do it all the time, though. You'd get burned out and there's more to life than work," says the man, whose hobbies include windsurfing and keep-fit.