David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the response. I want to follow up with a number of questions. I will set out the problem. Patricia King, the president of ICTU, was before the Joint Committee on Climate Action last week and we had trade union officials before the joint committee earlier today. Essentially, they have stated that the infrastructure is woefully inadequate, that the just transition has not got off to a good start and two plants have closed prematurely, and that many of the solutions which the Minister says he is putting in place are not yet in place.

I want to raise two specific issues which are important in terms of the Minister's approach to this issue. One of the questions the trade unions asked us to ask the Minister, as it was not clear from the departmental response, was why the just transition commissioner was not given responsibility or powers in respect of industrial relations. That seems to be a sore point for the trade unions. Second, in regard to one of the main solutions the Minister talked about, the special programme of €20 million for the midlands, that is €20 million for retrofit. However, we do not know yet how that is going to work, how many homes will be retrofitted, what type of homes they will be, what will be the average cost per home or whether there will be a guarantee that people who are employed in any of these plants will get the jobs at the end of it. These are questions we are being asked and we do not have the answers to them. We put those questions to the Department officials both at the Committee of Public Accounts and at the joint committee but they do not have the responses because they are saying it is in the early stages and it is being worked on, which is part of the problem. Does the Minister have those responses?

To recap, why was the just transition commissioner not given any responsibility in regard to industrial relations, given the unions are quite upset about that? Incidentally, they are also very upset with Bord na Móna, which they say is not engaging and is playing for time. They have a fear that the strategy is to de-unionise that organisation. In terms of the €20 million for the retrofit programme, how is that going to work, how many homes will be retrofitted, what will be the average cost of a retrofit and will there be a guarantee that whoever gets the contract to do that will employ people who need to be employed, from these plants or elsewhere, as part of what is being described as a just transition? There are a lot of questions so I will allow the Minister to come back in.