Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

I agree with the Deputy on the change of emphasis over recent years, but I disagree with him on the Green Party's agenda. All parties in the House have been engaged with the agenda for a long time. An additional 2,000 jobs were created in 2011. A Cabinet sub-committee is dealing directly with this area and it gives Government impetus to it.

There is a challenge for Ireland in the next phase of commitments which we have to meet on carbon reduction. That should give rise to new opportunities in this field. It is not possible to quantify how many jobs will be created. No one can do that and it would be unrealistic to do so. However, I agree with the Deputy in another respect. A SWOT analysis was carried out and it showed that there was a lack of coherence in overall policy due to a large number of State and local agencies being involved, and there was some fragmentation of the research base. That is now being firmly taken in hand.

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