Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, for the work he is doing in his Department to lead on the strategy. It is essential that we widen and deepen our skills space here in Ireland. I note that the European Year of Skills centres on the whole idea of reskilling 6 million people in the area of digital and green technology skills. Given the scope of it, how we apply this in an Irish context can be broadened and deepened. What I repeatedly see in my constituency office is people unable to fill roles that they have advertised in their companies and businesses. The skill of butchering is also dying out. At one point it was a skill where you had to fulfil an apprenticeship, but now many of the larger meat producing companies sell a full carcass that is cut up and can be sold directly in the butcher shop. The art of butchering is gone. I know of one butcher in County Clare who wanted to hire a butcher. He advertised online and in the newspaper but he did not get any uptake on it. Eventually, he came into my office and we had to assist him with getting a work visa for somebody to come from South Africa. That just tells us how it is.

I also know of a number of public bus routes in the Limerick and Clare area which could not get going for a number of months because there was a shortage of drivers. Thankfully, that has been addressed. I applaud the Government on the initiative taken to allow Ukrainian drivers to drive large vehicles and to convert and upskill their licences. The Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, was very much to the fore in that regard.

The area of renewables is an important one that must be explored. Green technology is quite central to the European Year of Skills. The level of offshore projects we have planned in Ireland is monumental. If we add up all of the floating offshore wind projects that are in the pipeline at the moment for the west coast, they have a cumulative value of some €76 billion, which is absolutely colossal. They may not all see the light of day, but these are projects that large companies and industry are prepared to put a buck behind. They are prepared to invest and the Government is prepared to explore the options in that regard. We have set up the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA. We have all of the frameworks in place. The resources need to be augmented a little bit, but a lot of this will happen. Many people are saying the opportunity now that this offshore floating wind energy provides is quite similar to what Aberdeen had in the mid and late 1990s when there was an abundant supply of offshore oil off the Scottish coast. This is an opportunity we must seize. If we are to make offshore wind a success, we must look at the skill sets involved in that whole area.

Concrete shuttering is a skill that has totally fallen off the agenda in Ireland. It was very prevalent back in the 1950s up to the 1970s, but that skill is no longer taught in any institution. It is no longer a skill, yet it is absolutely essential from an anchoring point of view that we have that skill in abundance, certainly along the coastal parts of Ireland. A whole plethora of skills are involved in the maintenance and repair of offshore wind turbines. This is also a skill we need to get ahead of.

The Minister of State, Deputy Collins, knows this because Shannon Foynes Port, which will be one of the main gateways for this energy, is in his constituency.

I wish to talk about Ireland's population trends. The population of Ireland in 1959 was 2.8 million, whereas its population in 2023 is 5.1 million. Our population is very much on an upward trajectory and this will continue. The reality is we are in a very unfortunate scenario with two intersecting factors competing: a shortage of housing and a shortage of skills. We need an increase in population, yet that would only exacerbate a crisis we already have in meeting the housing needs of our current population. Over the next five or ten years, we will require an even greater population to fulfil our economic needs and meet our workforce requirements. The examples I have given, be they associated with a butcher's shop, bus routes or skilled labour in the offshore wind sector, suggest there is not enough labour to meet all the needs.

The Government should have a strategy on this. If we do not, we will have our eye wiped for us by several of our European counterparts. A very senior European diplomat recently told me that if Ireland does not position itself to reap the full benefits of offshore wind, the likes of the ports at Bremen, Hamburg and Rotterdam will be able to build offshore turbines, tow them into place and avail of the lucrative opportunities that phase 1 of offshore development presents. Phase 2 is the construction, of course, and phase 3 is reaping the environmental and, indeed, financial rewards. If we do not have a strategy, our eye will be wiped.

Recently there was a very good announcement on jobs in County Clare. It was backed up by investment and Government support. It was only after the fanfare had died down that someone in the company said it was going to struggle to recruit the people for the jobs. That is not ideal. At least the investment is coming and the jobs are being created, but we need the human capital. We need people to do the work. Now more than ever, there is a strong argument for having a west coast counterbalance to the greater Dublin economy.

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