Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator O'Reilly for her question. She put it very well when she spoke about the core values of technological universities. The first part of my answer is that they need to be owned by the regions. I keep on having these conversations with the regions. The Government can set up a technological university in Dublin, but we then need to have the infrastructure in place for the regions to benefit. I will give an example of what I mean by that. We have been talking about the technological university in the south east for most of the meeting. We set up a regional enterprise engagement group, and we now have the chambers of commerce involved. People are talking about what they can do if there is a university in a region and how they can put it to work. They are asking what skills are needed, what jobs there will be in the future, what they want young people in Wexford, Waterford, Carlow or Kilkenny to be working on in the future, and how they can keep people in their communities. Equally, we need to go into schools and tell people that they can now get an education in County Wexford that can keep them living in their community and they do not have to head to the big city in Dublin or somewhere else. We have a transformation fund and we want to put that to work to try to excite the regions. Even in a small country like Ireland, every region is different in terms of its jobs and skills needs. If we get this right, when we look back at the end of our term in government or in a decade it will mean more young people being able to stay in their region. We know that the longer people stay in their region when they leave school, the more likely they are to buy a house, have a family and stay there. That will help repopulate and regenerate parts of the country.

I know Senator O'Reilly is passionate about the greening of the economy, as I am. The Department has a major role to play. We can have all of the ambition we want in the programme for Government, and it is good that we do, but if we are to turn that into practical results on the ground, as the Senator rightly said, we must use this sector. I will give a quick example of one action that we have taken. We set up four centres of excellence for retrofitting. We need an awful lot more as we have a hugely ambitious programme for the retrofitting of homes, but we do not have the people to carry it out at the moment. Those four centres of excellence will see a very significant increase in the number of people trained in retrofitting and providing good jobs but also good, green, sustainable jobs as well.

The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, will make sure of this, but we will see positive discrimination through the capital plan and research funding in favour of projects that help to bring about climate action. One of the big costs we will face as a sector, which could be viewed more as an investment rather than a cost, is making all our buildings carbon-neutral. I was looking at the figures on that the other day. It is a massive project. I accept the challenge. I take Senator O’Reilly's point that we need to bed it into programmes for all students. I will follow that up with the HEA and I would be happy to correspond with her on it.