Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the climate action plan. It is the first statutory plan since the adoption of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021 and the agreement last year on the sectoral emissions ceilings. One of the critical pieces of the climate Act is that it provides for an annual revisable plan and should we find we are off track at any point, we can review and revise the plan such that we get back on track. That is one of the strongest elements of the Act.

Achieving a decarbonised economy and a climate neutral Ireland will bring new sustainable opportunities but it will also be challenging and it will require significant changes across all and every sector. I was pleased to see the announcement yesterday by the Ministers, Deputies Ryan and Harris, on the significant progress being made in the number of participants in the near zero energy building, NZEB, and the retrofit upskilling and reskilling programmes.

Following the opening of the education and training board, ETB, centres of excellence in retrofit training, there has been a continuous strong increase in the number of workers availing of the upskilling and reskilling opportunities. The increase from the initial 363 enrolments in 2020 to more than 2,000 last year puts us strongly on the path towards the target of retrofitting 500,000 homes by 2030. The centre of excellence for retrofit and NZEB skills in Roxboro in my own constituency of Limerick City will provide training for approximately 1,500 workers per year.

Skills and resources have the power to underpin or, indeed, undermine our great effort. The skills challenge we face is not just directly in the area of renewables or retrofitting. Our whole planning system has to ramp up in order that, now that we as a State have set the ambition, we do not then get in the way. We have sent strong signals that Ireland will be a net exporter of energy, primarily utilising our west coast wind energy resource. This will be floating wind technology. Private industry throughout the world has heard the call and wishes to move fast and, within reason, we should not hold it back or get in its way.

I have a serious concern that while we are sending these strong signals we are still constraining this sector. Concerns have been raised in recent days. I draw the Minister of State's attention to an article in The Connaught Telegraphpublished just this afternoon. The concern is that the west coast ambition in floating technology is to be scheduled behind the south coast in the upcoming policy statement on phase 2 of offshore wind with regard to floating wind deployment. This is a very bad message to be sending to the global wind energy development sector, when developers are telling us they are chomping at the bit to get involved in the west coast of Ireland.

I ask the Minister of State to ensure the west is not scheduled behind the south coast and that we have a level playing field in the deployment of floating offshore wind technology.

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