Recently I asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris TD, about the huge retrofitting plan we have. He and his Department are playing a very important role in upskilling our workforce so that we have the capacity to retrofit up to 500,000 homes to B2 standard by 2030. Limerick is at the forefront of this with the centre of excellence at Roxboro, and that is in addition to the courses TUS is offering in that institution. It is now nearly two years since the Roxboro centre of excellence was set up. It is time to look back at how it is performing and how it is improving capacity in the region and the country. Limerick and the Midwest are playing an important role in upskilling and increasing our retrofitting capacity.
Minister Harris' response:
I remember when Deputy Leddin and I opened that centre together. It has been a key part of the infrastructure. We now have a number of centres of excellence throughout the country. In fact, the question we used to get asked was whether we would have enough capacity in the education system to help people get retrofitting skills. The question now is different. It is now about whether we will be able to create enough demand. We now have more capacity than demand. I will get the individual breakdown for the Deputy, but I can say that the number of people accessing retrofitting training is going up year on year and month on month. Limerick is playing an important role in that. We need, however, to give consideration to policy initiatives to stimulate more demand, in particular making it easier for small and medium businesses to free up their staff to avail of the training.
