Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The way in which we approached developing a climate action plan was very much a conscious one. When I took on this post, I was very conscious that high ambition had been set in the past and it had not delivered, so we needed a different foundation. That foundation was provided initially by the Citizens' Assembly and then by the work of the Oireachtas, in which I know the Chairman was intimately involved, as were many of the members of the committee. On the basis of that foundation, we have developed the plan, which involves, as the Deputy knows, a range of measures right across every sector and it includes just transition. In the immediate opportunity after the publication of the climate action plan, we see that just transition is embodied in the very first budget.

It is also significant that the commitment was made that in regard to carbon pricing, which is recognised by most parties as an inevitable part of making this transition, every cent of that is going to be ploughed back into helping communities to adapt. A big part of that adaptation is around just transition for people who are particularly exposed, such as Bord na Móna workers, or particularly ill-equipped, such as poorer households.

That is not to say there have not been programmes of just transition in the past. I know, from my own experience in the Department of Education and Skills, that every time there was a challenge, and there had been challenges in the past in Bord na Móna, there would have been a step-up by the education and training boards, the various education bodies and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, but they had been running on conventional tracks. What we are doing here is elevating this to a much higher level, recognising the scale of change that we have to deliver.