Ms Marion Jammet:

On the skills issue, we agree with the comments on apprenticeships and the need for more of them. Also, with respect to people already working in the industry, especially when it comes to retrofitting, we need to ensure we have quality renovation. We have the grant process. In the past five years there have been increasingly more training courses for construction workers such as courses run by the education and training boards, ETBs, for nearly zero energy building, NZEB, and retrofit but not enough people are taking up this course. The main problem is people are not incentivised to go on this training course because they will be competing with someone who has not upskilled for the same job. We would like there to be a way to incentivise people to go on this training course. That could be done possibly through public procurement. Another option would be to consider something similar to the Safe Pass course but also covering sustainability. That is what we need to think about.