Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The first question the Deputy asked me was with regard to people passing away. I hope to God we are not; I do not know whether we are. From our perspective in my Department, we did a bit of research with the Central Bank a number of weeks ago which I published last Wednesday week. I will send a copy of it to the Deputy this afternoon. It looks at all of the people on the pandemic payment, the industries they have come from and the relative vulnerability of those industries that are due to go back in phases 2 to 5.

We know that in many cases people will not go back to companies that are in the same shape or size. Some people might not go back to work until long after phase 5. I will get all of that data for Deputy Gannon. The reason for having the data is to allow us to plan and prepare for a major programme of activation, training, education, reskilling and redeployment. While many industries are losing jobs, in a number of industries thousands of jobs are available but we do not have the people to fill them. We will try to encourage recruitment and training to move people from jobs that may no longer exist into the new economy, the new green economy and the new caring economy. There will a new way of doing different things. There will, for example, be a whole new economy developing around home working, which we may not have anticipated happening as fast as it has done.

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