Dr. Jeanne Moore:

As part of the social dialogue which is a key part of just transition, employees would be a very important part of all conversation, not just employers. Sinéad Mercier’s work has looked at examples of just transition around the world and the employee is obviously part of that conversation. Yes, I completely agree with the Senator that this is a key part of the way to do this going forward.

With regard to the work raised by Deputy O’Rourke, that was a piece of research by Seán McCabe that we commissioned from TASC. It is a very interesting piece of work which looked at the Preston model of community wealth building, where the local authority used money to invest in the local community.

It was using public procurement as a tool for job creation. He made the point that investment in climate could be used in the same way for rural Ireland as a catalyst. It is a very interesting idea. We funded that research. We wanted to start a conversation on that as a way of looking at different models of co-creation and the idea of bringing economic opportunities into the heart of thinking about just transition and climate, while always looking to the future and doing that in a local way. We have not progressed that, although we would be very interested in doing it. Obviously, we are going to touch on it in the agriculture work.

I will hand over to my colleague.