Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The National Training Fund is predominantly the responsibility of other Departments, to be fair. The Minister for Justice and Education are both involved with it. There is a big emphasis on apprenticeships and on the upskilling and training that is needed. We will continue to invest heavily in that space, which is badly needed.

To make offshore wind infrastructure happen in our ports, the Department of Transport is working with key ports, companies and authorities at the moment to try to get business plans in place so we can understand what are realistic aspirations. We need space, depth and adequate quaysides

We potentially have that in Shannon Foynes Port where there is huge space and depth for both wet storage and assembly on land. However, an investment in infrastructure of between €200,000 and €500,000 is required to make that happen. We will get more detail on it when the Shannon Estuary task force reports in early July. We will then have a very clear ask of Government on how we progress it.

It is a bit more complicated in Cork but, in some ways, more urgent. There are a number of locations in Cork harbour. Some of the options are owned by the Port of Cork but there are others in the Cork dockyard that are privately owned. We need to turn options into an actual plan for delivery and decisions around who is paying and what role the will State play. I want to progress this to get more definitive actions in place to realise the potential that exists. Other ports such as Rosslare Europort need to be considered as well. Otherwise, we are going to have the challenge of getting quayside to actually assemble this huge infrastructure, which is not easy to do. Ports on the west coast of the UK are pretty full. Infrastructure of this size cannot be towed for long distances, which poses real problems. We need to build port capacity on this island and, of course, in some of the key ports that I have mentioned. We very focused on doing so and I met the Minister for Transport on this issue last week

Regarding work permits, we are going to make some progress on intra-company transfer in the context of spouses and we are looking at the critical skills list, as I mentioned earlier.