Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In response to Senator Ahearn, the jobs growth numbers have been phenomenal. As Deputy Bruton pointed out earlier, we deliberately have not set a definitive number for job growth for the next two years because Ireland is at full employment right now. We are seeing really strong jobs growth. We have also got to bed down the employment we currently have and support adding value in terms of the current workforce.

On the disability side, this is something on which I have very strong views. We are not as good as we should be. It is not acceptable that only 30% of people with disabilities in Ireland are employed. We set a target, as a country, that 6% of the workforce, roughly, would be people who have a disability and we are currently not reaching 3%. In some parts of the public sector the numbers are much better but in other parts they are not. I am going to do more in this area and we are looking at how we can do that. There are some fantastic examples in Ireland of young adults with a disability who are being trained and are working incredibly hard to get themselves into the workforce. We should support that and the employers who support them. That is across a broad range of disabilities. This is an area where we are not as good as we should be. We need to reflect on, and we are, what we can do more efficiently. I hope to be able to meet some of the stakeholders in this areas to work through with them the best approaches. There are some great projects - I have been involved in some of them - that can be replicated in other parts of the country to help people to make the transition into the workforce, and to focus on their abilities to do that.

I have Government sanction now to put in place an industrial strategy for the country in the context of offshore wind. We are not looking at offshore wind solely through a climate lens, although that is really important in terms of the decarbonisation of our economy and society. We are also focusing on what is an opportunity to provide up to 37 GW of energy generation offshore by 2050, and 7 GW by 2030 - 5 GW directly connected to the grid and another 2 GW, probably, on floating platforms that are linked to hydrogen generation. If one thinks about the magnitude of that between now and 2050 one is probably talking about €120 billion of capital investment on offshore infrastructure. We have to prepare our ports and grid for that, which is happening already but of course we need to accelerate the work. We need to ensure we are looking at strategic landbanks to take advantage of that from a cluster perspective in terms of creating new modes of employment around the country, on the back of that clean energy coming onshore whether that is for data centres or high-energy manufacturing like microchip manufacturing and so on. There is huge demand for clean power which we need to be central to an industrial strategy and a climate action strategy. We need to do both. In case anybody thinks we are only starting this process now and, therefore, nothing will happen for nine or ten months until the strategy is in place, we are working as we go. I am very much working with theMinister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, on ensuring that strategies are in place for port developments in places like Shannon-Foynes, Cork, Rosslare and other ports around the country to make sure we are gearing up the infrastructure that is needed for this scale of investment, which is really a new industrial revolution for Ireland. We are planning for that scale of activity but it will not happen by itself. We have made mistakes in the past. We are not as far ahead as we should be in this space. In the past the attainment of permits and foreshore licenses was a lot more time consuming than it should have been. The work is very much under way and my Department will have quite a significant role to play in planning the associated industrial strategy.

On the decarbonisation of companies and the associated grant aid, we must make sure that when we spend public money we change behaviour. On the question of whether a company which has already made the change would be the focus of grant aid when we are trying to get others to make the change, we need to think about that. We need to make sure the public money we spend actually decarbonises the economy and that the focus is on that. TBESS is different. We are effectively financially supporting companies that have seen a dramatic increase in their cost base through no fault of their own because of the war in Ukraine, whereas grant aid for decarbonisation within companies is about changing behaviour. There is a difference but I heard the point that has been made. It would be difficult to make the case to spend tens of millions of euro with companies that have already made that change when there are thousands of companies we need to encourage and incentivise to move into that space as well.