Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am going to give the Minister and Minister of State a break from the south east for a moment. Members from the south east have managed to give more than enough airtime to that particular matter today. I add my voice to the tréimshe Gaeltachta issue, although I hasten to add my honeymoon was better than my tréimshe Gaeltachta, just in case my wife is listening.

On the issue of the roll-out of retrofits, and I acknowledge Waterford and Wexford Education and Training Board led the way in piloting that, in conjunction with that, and I have mentioned this before to the Minister of State, Deputy Collins, I see a need for heritage building skills apprenticeships, especially if we meaningfully engage with the town centres first agenda and drive it forward. We might then be looking not just at retrofitting our building stock from the 1950s or 1970s but also the renovation of our older town centre stock, much of which requires that heritage skills aspect. Therefore, as well as retrofit being a huge growth area in terms of skills and the type of work that is going to become available, I see a huge opportunity for those heritage building skills to become very important as we begin to retrofit and renovate within our town centres.