Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is preaching to the converted. The Government is taking a collective approach to create viable coastal communities, whether in fishing, marine tourism, ocean renewables, servicing offshore oil or gas rigs, leisure and sport or technology and design. We think the marine sector will have a turnover of well over €6 billion by 2020 and that should enable us to maintain a quality of life in coastal communities of which we can all be proud. The challenge is to ensure that young men and women growing up in those coastal communities can develop the skill sets to build careers servicing those industries by building their own businesses around those industries, whether aquaculture, fishing, tourism, energy or hospitality. I will happily talk to the Deputy in more detail about it. It might be useful to set up a working group of some coastal Deputies, maybe of Government and Opposition, to explore the possibilities of putting in place apprenticeships about which the Deputy speaks and to improve skill sets in areas that may have been traditionally valuable but may, over time, have become diminished.

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