Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the achievements of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. It has been no mean achievement to manage Covid-19, Brexit and the Ukraine crisis, come through with 2.6 million people at work and, at the same time, move to introduce a living wage, sick pay and remote working rights, protect tips, have a new public holiday and move towards recognising collective bargaining. We also had the ruling on delivery riders. There is significant progress in improving the security of people at work and the number of people with decent conditions. That should be acknowledged because the Department's traditional primary role was around job creation and now we are asking a lot more of it. That is where I want to turn my questions to.

We have had the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, Skillnet Ireland, local enterprise offices, LEOs, and Enterprise Ireland before the committee. A resounding theme has been that sustainability is the key to competitiveness. However, only 1% of employers are engaged with SEAI programmes, 1% with Skillnet Ireland and a tiny percentage are engaged with Enterprise Ireland and the programmes that are designed to leverage transformation to make sustainability a permanent feature. Are alarm bells going off in the Department that we need to make a major shift in this area? That is certainly the sense I have. The Department has developed a decent suite of policies and at a high level we know the direction we need to travel. That is the reality, however. The reasons put forward for not introducing sustainability measures are often not based in reality. We heard cost is often put forward as a reason whereas many of these measures are cost-free and improve the profitability of businesses. In that context, does Dr. Coates see the need to make significant shifts? For example, should we have a sectoral strategy for delivering circularity and sustainability in the food sector? It is a big sector that is associated with a lot of the negative side of environmental damage in terms of biodiversity loss. Massive change could occur in the area of food waste and in the whole supply chain right down to packaging at supermarket level.

There is a golden opportunity for the Department to say it will make a real shift here. Is any thinking of that nature going on? I worry when I see the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications producing a strategy that is so far remote from the enterprise sectors where the action is happening. What is happening in the Department to say this transformational change is real and we cannot just confine ourselves to the industrial emissions, which I know the Department tracks? Enterprise's impact is much wider than just those narrow industrial emissions. I would like to hear Dr. Coates's view on that shift.