Order of Business
The Chair outlines time limits for questions on promised legislation. Deputy Donnelly asks about overdue Brexit sectoral reports, and the Minister says there is no publication schedule but work is under way in skills planning.
I remind Members that there are only 15 minutes allocated for questions on promised legislation. I ask all Deputies, including leaders or their representatives, to confine their questions to promised legislation or the programme for Government.
Comment on this
There is a firm commitment from the Government to publish detailed sectoral reports in response to Brexit. When we raised this issue with the Taoiseach two weeks ago, he informed us that no deadline for the publication of any of these reports had yet been released. Brexit started a year ago. The Irish food and drinks industry estimates that trade has fallen by about €570 million in the past year and that it could fall by twice that amount this year, yet not only do we not have detailed sectoral reports from any Minister, we have not even had a release date or an indication as to when they might be expected. At this point, are there dates for publication of the detailed sectoral plans in response to Brexit?
Comment on this
I do not have access to any schedule of publication but in my own area of skills, which is a very important one, we had a meeting this week with the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and our own delivery agencies to identify the areas of pressure. We will be pursuing those within the National Skills Council to make sure our provision and planning for next year incorporates concerns that have arisen specifically out of the Brexit report. We will not be publishing a particular element of that, but we will be focusing on the priorities. I will bring to the attention of the appropriate Ministers the matter of whether a date has been agreed for these sectoral reports to be issued because they can help people frame their own response and planning. To be fair, Enterprise Ireland is providing a very good framework across sectors to which companies can respond.