Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the council has been reconvened and will meet tomorrow and I am also glad that it is smaller. I propose that it address the way we make a just transition to a low-carbon economy. Deputy Micheál Martin raised the issue of peat workers in Littleton who are losing their jobs and there is an opportunity here to use our partnership model to bring people together in order to manage the change to a low-carbon economy with a just transition.

It is appropriate to have a slimmer National Economic and Social Council but it should also be flexible. We should bring in international economic and social advice, as well as input from local communities and experts in specific areas, to any commission to achieve a just transition. It should not be the old structure with the same reliable operators, good as they are in representing particular interests. It should be a more flexible council which allows people to come in and go out and invites people from right down at the granular level of local communities to take part, with different people coming in for different issues.

The National Economic and Social Council should look at the economic and social justice aspects of low-carbon transition because it is clear that under the current system the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform, Finance, and Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation do not have the faintest idea what to do, nor the economic analysis nor the capability to assess the transition we need to make. The National Economic and Social Council could be a good home for this analysis. It needs to be quick and there would need to be an immediate response, for example, to the workers in Tipperary so that they are not left adrift. A more flexible and innovative council could address these strategic but specific cases and I hope the Taoiseach puts this forward as an idea for the work of the council tomorrow.

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