Professor Brian Caulfield:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. My colleague from DCU has answered all of them remarkably well. I will focus on just one, which is the question regarding a climate action ecosystem. The key issue I see in this regard is one of capacity, as mentioned by my Trinity College colleague. I refer to our capacity to graduate students who can do all the work that is required. In my role as head of civil engineering at Trinity College, I see the numbers coming into civil engineering decreasing. The salaries being offered in the sector are competing against what is on offer from the likes of Google, Meta and all those places. When I talk to our graduates, I tell them that the challenge is to try to save the planet. We are asking them to go out there and build the wind turbines, metro systems and all the large projects that are needed. The capacity we are producing is not enough to deliver those projects. In Trinity College and across the whole university sector, as my colleague mentioned, we are looking at new ways of merging different disciplines to answer this really difficult question. Capacity will be the key issue for us to solve in order to deliver what is needed.