Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:35 pm on 14 June 2022.
Between now and 2028, Wales will need to recruit, on average, an additional 2,000 full-time equivalent workers to carry out the highly technical challenge of decarbonising homes in Wales. Now, during a recent Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee meeting, Mark Bodger, from the Construction Industry Training Board, highlighted that there has always been an appetite for people to retrain and reskill in sectors that can improve and broaden their trade. He also identified a major untapped market—shockingly, only around 3 per cent of these workers are female. So, with the Welsh Government—yes, your Welsh Government, First Minister—failing to publish the net-zero skills action plan, and we're not set to see one until the winter of 2022, which is of course much too late because the cold, harsh weather will have kicked in by then, will you as the First Minister clarify why there has been such a delay to a plan being developed, and what steps are you taking to encourage women to take up decarbonisation roles? Diolch.