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

I formally welcome Deputy Bacik to the House. Well done to her on her election. I wish her the very best and look forward to working with her as a constituency colleague.

We have to make sure our transition is just. Social justice must be achieved in the wake of addressing the ecological crisis. There are so many different parts to that. The Government and its predecessor have done a lot of work on the establishment of a just transition commissioner, Mr. Kieran Mulvey, who has been working very specifically in the midlands. The midlands is our first example of determining how to transition a community in genuinely difficult circumstances. We have to switch off the extraction of peat and the use of peat in power generation and other areas and create alternative employment.

I believe that work is starting to bear fruit. We are starting to see a significant number of new jobs as Bord na Móna switches from brown to green. There has been significant investment of €100 million in the rehabilitation of bogs. More than 200 people are now employed to work on bogs. Those are the same people, using the same skills, who were previously involved in peat extraction. I could go into the details of how those projects are being rolled out and creating real employment. Bord na Móna is expanding, as is employment in the midlands. The retrofitting of social housing within local authorities is also occurring and that is an example of what we need to be doing. That is only the start and there are many sectors in our society that we need to start thinking about and planning their transition. We need to start considering how to manage the transition of the agricultural, forestry and car sectors.

I am engaged in ongoing work with the National Economic and Social Council. Its secretariat has done a lot of good work and thinking around structures for just transition. Work in the midlands is ongoing. We need to work with the European Commission to use European funds to build on the work that has already been done. I will come back to the Deputy with further measures in which we are engaged.

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