Dr. Tom McDonnell:

That is a great question. There is a problem with inertia. We know that. We have seen copious policy failures in terms of delayed projects, infrastructure failures and so on. We all hear about the silo problem over and over again. I would argue that any programme for Government should identify a small number of missions to achieve over a five-year period in respect of which the Department of the Taoiseach would knock together the heads of all those from the other Departments, semi-States and in the context of asking how those missions are going to be achieved. In other words, it would ask the following questions. How will we build out a green grid or a renewable energy infrastructure? How will we do this over five or ten years? Why are we failing? Why are we not achieving our housing targets?

It involves having everyone in the room together and having a chain of command that makes it happen. I completely agree with the Cathaoirleach on that. It is the Mazzucato approach to a certain degree. The notion is that the US was able to put a person on the moon in less than ten years because the authorities in the US made it a mission. They really focused on it. They put the investment in place. Here, we built Ardnacrusha. Can you imagine Ardnacrusha being built today? It would take half a century and multiple billions of euro. These things are not wicked problems, they are not intractable and they can be solved. The problem is that things are siloed. It is not that there is any individual who is at fault. It is just that the system does not talk to itself and we do not have a mission focus. Just like the moon landing, we need a mission focus about how we green the grid, for example. How do we do that and in a way that reduces costs for business? Let that be our competitiveness strategy – we will just make energy so cheap that it basically takes away one cost.

It is there with housing too, as Mr. Nugent has said a few times. That is a competitiveness issue. It is also not a wicked problem. That can be solved. We built houses in the past, but we need a solution for where we get the construction workers from. That requires a mature debate about where they are going to come from and an understanding and acceptance of the fact that they will not come from the domestic space. They cannot.

Apprenticeships take four years so it takes time for people to come through.