Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

On the overall figures, we all know the climate action plan figures and the Paris Agreement figures but it is always good to have targets outside of the 51% by 2030 one. Does Skillnet have any way of measuring the carbon reductions it is expecting or hoping for from its training? The SEAI also needs annual targets and not just targets for 2030 and 2050. Do the witnesses have any breakdown of targets? Have they figured out targets for themselves that they need to be aiming for?

On the SEAI website there is a list of registered guys and girls who can do the work under various grant schemes and for businesses but they are not listed geographically. It is hard for people who are new to the whole thing to know how to pick one out of so many when there is no geographic link. If they could get someone in their own county or could find out from someone who used an installer in their county, that would reduce the costs and also reduce the carbon footprint of the people doing the work as well. We are missing a trick there. Even if an installer covers the whole country, he or she usually has a base somewhere. Having a list of a million different companies that provide all of these services is not particularly useful. It would speed things up and give people more confidence if they could find a provider in their own or in neighbouring counties. That is something that the SEAI should look at.

I met with representatives of SOLAS, the head of apprenticeships, Enterprise Ireland, and Business in the Community as my party's spokesperson for enterprise, trade and employment. I am really concerned about the targets and am not sure how it all works. All of the aforementioned bodies, as well the witnesses, are doing the work of setting targets, upskilling businesses, conducting audits and so on and I feel there is duplication. I am not sure how they are all working together in providing audits, supports, steps, programmes, toolkits and lots of other thing. The bottom line is that most small businesses that I am most concerned about do not have the time for any of that; they just want to know where the money is. The green for micro scheme, for example, involves a two-day audit, which is a good thing because somebody comes into the business and the audit is linked to a specific grant. However, there is the climate action toolkit and so many other things out there. I tried to do a newsletter for all SMEs but it was a nightmare to try to figure it out, even for me who has the time to do it, with a staff member and researcher helping me. How is a small business owner going to get his or her head around the whole thing? There has to be another way. We have to streamline it in some way. All of the bodies involved, including SOLAS, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Enterprise Ireland, the LEOs, SEAI and Skillnet have to get together in a room and figure it out in some way. They are all doing the work but there are too many different things and it is chaotic for business owners. I say this on the basis of working with small business owners all of the time. I would love to see it all streamlined to make it easier for people. At the end of the day, they pretty much know it is about reducing their energy bills but they want to know how they can do that and what supports are available to them. It is not rocket science but they do not have time to go through all of the different facets.

How does Skilllnet engage with the education and training boards, ETBs, the other educational facilities and with SOLAS? How do we make sure that they are all in it together? How can it be ensured that all courses, whether they are short or long, degrees or night classes, are getting us to where we need to be? We know we have potentially thousands of jobs in the green economy and are losing jobs in other areas of the economy as a result of climate change but we really need to makes sure that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet and that all the relevant bodies are working together. Keeping all the courses up to date is absolutely essential if we are going to meet the needs of the built environment and reduce the carbon footprint. I read recently that 50 million tonnes of timber are thrown away in Europe every day and I am sure Ireland has a part to play in that. There are lots of great State agencies and lots of good things are happening, but the more meetings I have with them, the more I feel that they all need to be in the one room together to make sure that together they succeed in meeting what are enormous targets. The energy sector has enormous targets because carbon emissions from energy are massive.

There are other issues I wish to raise but maybe I can get some answers to those questions first.