Ms Patricia King:

The point that was raised about the modelling and the policymaking is important. Taking the topic of just transition, there is no precise modelling that will give the answers, but the discussions on and the considerations of both the budget committee and the council went along the lines that we know that there will be job losses and job creation. The budget committee provided quite a lot of work on that, and my colleague, Professor Ryan, will, I am sure, contribute on that. Our task was to make sure that, from the point of view of policy advice to the Government, we would say to the Government that to ensure we have a just transition and manage the job replacement and the job displacement that will occur, its policies should include a massive overhaul of the training and skills development infrastructure in the country in order that we can have timely interventions and offer workers whose jobs are gone or going, preferably at the stage at which the job is going rather than gone, timely reskilling and retraining intervention to enable that worker to becomes equipped to be a good employment option and has good alternative job options. We should not repeat some of the examples we have had. The Bord na Móna scenario, for instance, was not timely and there were job losses and not necessarily job replacement for displaced workers. We should get into a space where we can have that infrastructure ready and available for workers to upskill and retrain. We will hit some challenges. For instance, people talk about the availability of skilled labour to produce retrofitting. We have other exigencies in policies the Government is pursuing on housing and so on. In the advice the council gave the Minister in that regard, which the committee will have read, we say this is the policy advice on the infrastructure that needs to be put in place to meet these challenges. Professor Ryan will talk more in-depth about the actual projects that were done in UCD and other places to advise the council on that.