Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am often minded of the low ebb this country was in about 12 years ago, around 2011, when the tide had truly gone out. In the decade or more that has passed since then, I think it is safe to say we are in a better place. It is not often acknowledged how the efforts of the two previous Governments, Fine Gael and Labour up to 2016 and Fine Gael supported by Fianna Fáil under the confidence and supply arrangement up to 2020, helped us get to the position we are in now where we have a very successful economy and, in many respects, it is problems of success that we are trying to deal with, and they are real problems. I acknowledge the Opposition as well because it has played as important a role throughout that decade in holding the Government to account and pushing it. While we in these Houses do not agree all the time or on the detail, I think it is a collective success of our country and our politics that we are no longer in the position we were back in 2011.

We speak about the problems of success all the time here. One is the challenge of being at full employment and the constraint that is there now on taking this country in the direction it needs to go. I am very passionate about this country’s opportunity to develop as a sustainable society and economy but we cannot do that unless we figure out how to address the capacity constraint. There are a few ways to do it. One is to direct our young people to the roles and jobs of the future. There is certainly an important role there but it is probably not enough to get where we need to go so we will need to talk about reskilling. There are many careers and roles that unfortunately are going out of date. We need to do everything we can to transition our workforce to this new society and economy. It would be better for us collectively and it would be better for the individuals as well if we do everything we can. We have to talk about the sheer scale of reform that we are embarking on in the green transition. It is monumental. It is not just the young people in this country who will transition to new careers. We will have to welcome more people with the skills we do not have and cannot expect to have in the numbers we need. We have to welcome them to this country and figure out how to do that and in such a way that it works for them and for us and that it gets us to where we want to go.

We talk about some of those skills in the House quite often. We do not have enough engineers, planners or ecologists and we do not have the people to design our transport networks. All of those critical skills are needed in this country right now but we simply do not have enough. I have spoken here about this country’s huge wind energy potential. We have the energy but we just do not have the people to build it out or at least to do so as quickly as we would like. We must figure out how to get those skills into this country.

It is not simply about the skills, however. Those people will bring with them their families and they will put pressure on the systems that we have - our education and health systems, our housing and justice system - so we will need more people to keep those systems going as well. What we are likely to see in the next number of years is a real acceleration of population growth in this country. I think it could be very positive but it will bring massive challenges too. As a Parliament we must figure out how to do that.

I am very excited by the potential that is there which we can achieve if we work together, as we have done. Notwithstanding the daily battles that take place here, I think we have shown we can work together and perhaps unlike any other economy or society in Europe, we have shown that we can go from the lowest ebb to the success that we have now where we are dealing with the challenges of success. I do not want to underestimate them because they are very significant and not everybody is in the good and healthy position we want them to be and we have a lot to do to correct that.

On broadening the skills in our economy and society, I will be a bit parochial for a moment. The Minister will be very interested in this issue and it is something he knows a lot about, namely the intention to develop another veterinary school in Ireland. The University of Limerick is very well placed to be the location for that. It has succeeded, when many universities in this country did not think it would, in developing the graduate-entry medical school about 15 or 20 years ago. It is an excellent institution. The University of Limerick has been an incredible success, not only for Limerick and the mid west but the country. I believe the new veterinary school should be located in the mid west because that is where the need is for new vets. It is a good example of the challenges we have. Some 82 veterinary graduates come out of our universities every year but 320 are registered annually. Of the 240 who do not train in Ireland, some 50% are from Ireland and have trained in other countries and the other 50% are not from Ireland and have come here to work, so there is a clear need. It is one of countless examples of where we need to ramp up the numbers of people in our workforce. We will have to reach out to other countries to get those skills over here. There is a lot that we can do at home though, such as developing the new veterinary school at the University of Limerick campus and encouraging our young people to go into the areas we need them to go into. I hope the Ceann Comhairle will forgive me for being so parochial but it is not simply an issue for Limerick or the mid west. University of Limerick is very well positioned to be the location for that veterinary school but it also demonstrates the challenge we face across all society and the whole economy.

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