Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. Three years ago, there was nothing happening in this area. With this new coalition Government, we have in the past three years expedited offshore wind to a level that was never even envisioned by any Opposition parties. There were not even policies on it. As soon as we addressed the issue, people immediately asked why we had not done work on it already. We have to do it and we have to do it right. We had no maritime protected areas as such before this. We had no MARA. There was no plan for how we were going to do this. In a short three years we are now able to do offshore wind and start the process. We have had successful auctions with some of the cheapest prices in Europe. It is a really positive thing. People might say that we should have done it sooner but nobody was talking about this five or ten years ago, except the Green Party. It is great that, in three short years, we as a coalition have jumped forward so much, because offshore wind cannot be located somewhere unless it is known it is safe to do so there. We have to get the balance right between biodiversity and marine biodiversity. It is great that we have 30 years of experience from people like Dr.Simon Berrow and the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, IWDG. They have huge experience in mapping and ability to map our waters so that we know where are good and bad places to divide up the waters. Thanks to the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, we have quadrupled our maritime protected areas, and all this in just three years.

It is a very exciting time, for me especially. I live in Clare and Moneypoint is going to be one of the most significant places in the entire country. It will be supplying enough power for more than 2 million houses, at least, when we go offshore. It is not in the first round but it is important we plan ahead.

I want to talk a little about planning ahead because eight or ten years can go pretty quickly. I have been working with guidance counsellors, the Technological University of the Shannon in Limerick, Clare and Limerick Education and Training Board, ETB, the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group and an independent councillor in west Clare, Ian Lynch. I have some concerns about the fact that I do not see moves to get the upskilling and the training to counties Clare and Galway as there will be some offshore in Galway as well. Are we bringing the training and the skills to the people of Connemara, for example, in the first round? Will they be coming to Kilrush and Kilkee in Clare for the second round?

I will go through a few lists of different things we will need as soon as possible. They include planning and environmental impact assessments, project managers, civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers, ecologists, scientists, social scientists, marine biologists, construction, maintenance and repair people, health and safety officers, crane drivers, electrical and electronic technicians, energy plant operatives, legal and professional services, transport and logistics services and managers, accountants, and marine operatives like ship crew. I see that there are six centres of excellence coming and I welcome them. I know Mr. Seamus Hoyne has done great work in this area around the retrofitting programme, but it is not to do with offshore renewables. I see there are some good courses at the Technological University of the Shannon in Limerick and that Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board is offering some good courses in Raheen in Limerick.

If we are looking to a low-carbon future, however, we also need to bring the training as close as possible to the people who are living in the areas and who will be working there. We have an ETB in Kilrush and Kilkee, for example. Could Clare and Limerick ETB not do some of its training courses in the areas where the people already live who deserve the jobs and deserve to be upskilled? There were job losses at Moneypoint and there will be more as it is scaled back. It was always promised that the jobs would be brought back to west Clare and I know we can do that. I would love for the people of Clare to be the ones who are doing the training and the courses to get the jobs, as opposed to people down in UCC or UCD who will have these great degrees and courses accessible to them. We need to look at this issue. Courses could be provided online. So much can be done online. Students might have one day a month or one day a week where they come in to the ETB to do the training. We have think big on this.

We also have a good Shannon Estuary task force which is doing some great work. However, there is a huge imbalance between the representation from Clare and from Limerick, which concerns me. The task force is doing very good work. It points to the essential building blocks of unlocking the potential of the Shannon Estuary as a whole, but we need to make sure we get it right. We have the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority now, which is great, because we never had such an authority before. We had to get that in place. We had to get the maritime area consent across and now we have the options going. It is phenomenal what we have done in three years but now we need to get the rest of it right.

I have guidance counsellors coming to me asking what courses they should be pushing, who they should ask and where they find out. If students go to apprenticeships.ie, they are told to ask their guidance counsellor. We are missing a few tricks there. We have to join some dots. As a former educator myself, I would love to see this done. I have written HETAC and FETAC modules in the past and I know they can be broken down. A civil engineer, a carpenter or a digger driver can do a few modules and upskill for things that are going to be needed to be done in the future. That is the way education is going now. A person does not need to start from a position of no knowledge at all to doing a full degree sometimes. If a person has 30 years' experience as a carpenter and has never been qualified, he or she can still go into a masters degree. I cannot remember what it is called but it is when someone has loads of experience and it is counted as a qualification. That is something we really have to value because we have great people who have been working hard in places like Clare and Connemara for years, who are skilled and are just missing a module or two or a postgraduate qualification that could be done online or part time through access education and through the ETBs. It is something we really need to get right because we need people to start their degrees, masters and postgraduate courses now. I had a friend who did the HDip with me and he did not even have the leaving certificate, but he was able to do a postgraduate course.

I want to make sure we get this right. I want to see centres of excellence also doing outreach. It is great we have the six of them now and they are brilliant. I am not knocking it at all but I am always looking for more. We need to get them to do more reaching out as well. If we can do it in an ETB in one of those six areas, we should be able to provide that training. Of course some of it is very specific and we have a new marine building coming to Kilrush, so that can be kitted out to do some of the education as well. I would like to see that we do that in order that we do not have people either missing out on training because they cannot get there or driving long distances and burning loads of carbon as we train them up and upskill them to be moving us away from carbon.