Ms Patricia King:

Deputies Bruton and Devlin spoke about resilience. One part of the resilience piece will depend on how prepared we are and how prepared the economy is. We need to get ourselves ready for the reconfiguration of the economy as it will take place over the budget periods. Some of this we do not know about, but some of it we do. For example, the goal is to convert to 1 million electric cars over the period of the Government's plan. Given the type of engines that we use now we have many car mechanics who are not skilled in the electric vehicle area. We know that now. As the Deputy knows, I have no prowess in terms of models or anything else. However, it would not take a genius to work out that as we fill the place with electric cars, we will obviously greatly reduce the number of diesel and petrol cars. We could be getting ready now to train all those mechanics to become adept at what they will need to do with electric vehicles. We have not started to do it, by the way. Those are policy issues that need to be dealt with. We should be doing it now because we know it will happen.

The same applies for heating radiators. If the policy requires houses to have heat pumps and not have radiators, people engaged in making those radiators in factories at the moment will all need to transition to making heat pumps. We do not make heat pumps in Ireland, but we should. We have opportunities to invest and to develop all that stuff. We have the knowledge that we need to have even at this stage at an elementary level which is all I am talking about. We have that level of knowledge which should guide policy development to prepare ourselves for our resilient economy so that when the day comes and people no longer want to buy radiators, all the people who are working on that will be retrained and will know how to produce a heat pump.

That is not pie in the sky. It is called preparedness and it is also called building the resilience in the economy so we do not end up with a whole load of redundant people and asking ourselves why we did not do this or that. That is what I call preparedness.

The council now has the remit for the annual review. As council members we should be asking questions in the various sectors as to how we are achieving those targets and what the consequences are for jobs and so on. I have no scientific background and have very little to offer on that. However, I would see my role as asking those questions at the council so that we can provide good advice to the Government. After that, it is up to the policymakers.