Dr. Geraldine Brennan:

If I could come back to that using the example of a washing machine, it is what is referred to as a medium-lived complexity good. This means it is something that already has an average life of between five and ten years depending on the nature of the product. It is not a fast-moving consumer good, which is much harder to tackle. Again, the white goods sector, the electronics sector, is probably a front runner when it comes to the circular economy. The circular economy skills initiative to which I referred is the result of the White Goods Association, WGA, and WEEE Ireland, one of the two extended producer responsibility, EPR, schemes, basically saying they recognise that the Government will bring in reuse targets. Reusing goods requires technicians who know how to repair them. It is not that there is not a willingness but the sector does not have enough trained repair technicians. That was the case that was made for the funding. The industry said we needed a scheme developed to develop the skills needed to support us to keep things in reuse. Again, that is driven by a number of factors across Europe and the European circular economy action plan, the ecodesign directive, the extension away from electrical goods, etc.

To respond to the Senator's point, this is definitely about sectors finding what the barriers to implementation are and then the Government working with sectors to help them unlock those barriers. Again, CIRCULÉIRE has given a relatively nominal amount, in the grand scheme of things, to WEEE Ireland, the WGA and Fastrack into IT to develop this curriculum in a year and a half and put people through it. They have not even kicked off the pilot programme with the first cohort of students and already the education and training boards want to roll it out next year across three more ETBs. I caveat this with all respect to the public investment. The ETB will take this and roll it out across the country but it is the initial funding, which was almost seed funding in this case, to get out the gates, as it were, that is where the barriers lie. The other thing to say about the likes of CIRCULÉIRE's innovation fund is that like all funding, it is subject to state aid in de minimis. It is not that this is just public money. Industry in kind is bringing huge amounts of resources to get these things out of the gates. That partnership between industry and government is important to emphasise and is what we see as the success to date of CIRCULÉIRE given we are a relatively young initiative.