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

It is true what the Deputy says about the supply chain. Across a range of different sectors what we are seeing as a result of the pandemic is disruption to global supply chains. It is very real and is occurring in the construction sector as well as other sectors. It is adding to inflationary pressures, which is a real difficulty. We have to hope and expect that, as the economy returns to some sort of normal, the vaccines are rolled out and people are able to get the supply lines working better again, that short-run cost inflation will be temporary. The Irish industry has been good at this. We raised the planning and building regulations standards in 2007 and 2008, I recall, when we were in government. I remember talking a few years later to someone from Enterprise Ireland who said that that had led to a transformation in the supply chain of Irish companies which had good-quality insulation. Our standards at that time were higher than those in the UK and elsewhere. We ended up being an exporting country for a lot of such material. It is not just jobs in the construction sector; I think we can create jobs in the supply lines, where we have good companies, and that with the 30-year supply chain we can get the cost down and get the industry built up.

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