Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. We have a dedicated climate team headed by a principal officer in the Department. There is a question of whether we should expand it, perhaps rebadge it and develop it into a climate and circular economy unit. I had not thought about it but now the Deputy has said this to me, I will give it some thought and reflect on it. We will have a new climate action plan in the next couple of months and, with new climate legislation, he knows how carbon budgeting will work. A certain amount of the carbon budget and carbon reduction measures will be assigned specifically to my Department and it puts it up to us.

The idea of the legislation is to put it up to individual Departments to drive down emissions and waste in their sectors. That is something we must do and the philosophy behind the legislation is that each sector of the Government and Department becomes responsible for the emissions ascribed to it. If we are going to make progress, we must make this a big part of our work over the next couple of decades.

The Deputy asked about EI and IDA Ireland helping companies involved with offshore development. I am advised they work across the supply chain, including those developing proposals and investing. As he said, it is a competitive auction process and, therefore, I am not sure to what extent they can provide grant aid and so on. I will revert to him on that.

The Deputy will be aware that apprenticeships fall under the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, which is led by the Minister, Deputy Simon Harris. Many good things are happening and much progress is being made in recruiting apprentices and getting companies to take on apprenticeships and all new forms of apprentices. The target is to have 10,000 each year by 2025 and we are going to work with the Minister on that.

Management development is a valuable area and we know well-managed companies are more competitive and productive and perform better. We have a number of programmes to improve the quality of management in companies and perhaps it is an element we should scale up over the next couple of years, particularly if we want to close the productivity gap between domestic firms and SMEs on the one hand and the multinationals or other big firms on the other. They are generally able to do these sorts of things for themselves but we probably need to help smaller and domestic companies to help themselves in that regard.

We are doing a review of the legislation on work permits and there will be a new consolidated law on that. The Minister of State, Deputy English, is taking the lead on that project. Currently, work permit holders can change their employer within 12 months if they are made redundant or there is a fundamental change in the employment relationship. A person is not necessarily tied to one employer for five years and one can change after 12 months. I often wonder whether a better system for Ireland might be something like a green card system where we allow in a certain number of people with full access to all parts of the labour market. The advantage of an employment permit system is it can plug particular skills gaps in particular areas.

It might be a fruit farm in north Dublin or a mushroom farm in Monaghan. The reason employment permits are given is to fill such skills gaps. If this were not done, would it be possible to fill those gaps? People might get work permits but not want to work in the relevant sector or part of the country. We would then have a new problem to solve. That is the difficulty. Instinctively, I do not like the idea of people being invited into the country to work and being told they may only work for a particular employer because that creates a power relationship between employers and permit holders, who are migrants and who may not have many connections here or know their way around the system. They would be more open to exploitation in those circumstances. Instinctively, I would go the way the Deputy is going but, if we did that, would we not create a whole different problem? We would then be issuing work permits without being able to use the work permit system to fill skills gaps that exist in particular sectors. which are often in particular parts of the country. I do not know how to square that circle but I am open to suggestions.