Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are two specific answers. The expert group on future skills needs falls under the remit of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and SOLAS is an agency of my Department that looks at labour bulletins and where skills shortages exist and which has a responsibility for meeting those skills shortages.

I will take those two specific issues because we have figures for them. To deliver the retrofitting programme, we believe we need 17,000 additional people working in retrofitting by the middle of the decade, or 2025. To achieve that we will open five centres of excellence in retrofitting training. We have a centre open in Waterford and another in Mount Lucas, County Offaly. We will have three more coming this year, with one in Cork, one in Limerick and one in Sligo. This will give us the throughput to provide the 17,000 workers. We need to create the demand and my message to any tradesperson or craftsperson who happens to come across this debate or is listening, it is that these are short, fast, free and flexible courses. They can be done at the weekends and the average person's training is approximately three days. It is not a big apprenticeship programme but it is about somebody getting a piece of upskilling. With construction, we need 27,500 more people to build 33,000 homes per year by the middle of the decade.

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