A ‘decade for delivery’ on carbon reduction in focus

Speaking immediately after the first day’s keynote at May’s joint IHEEM Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland Branch conference in Dublin, William Walsh, CEO of the Sustainability Energy Authority of Ireland, described some of the key partnerships, and the ensuing benefits, that the SEAI has forged with the HSE to support the latter’s drive to reduce the carbon footprint of the country’s public sector healthcare estate.

As with the opening keynote speaker, Dean Sullivan of Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE), who presented immediately before him, the SEAI’s William Walsh was introduced to the conference audience by IHEEM’s Republic of Ireland Branch Chair, Bill O’Reilly. He began: “The theme for today’s conference is ‘Delivering sustainable healthcare estates’, and that concept of delivery is important, because this is indeed a decade for delivery, and many of us here in this room will drive it. I want to go deeper into the partnerships that will achieve this, such as our partnership with the HSE. The title of my presentation today is thus ‘SEAI and the HSE: Delivering sustainable healthcare estates’. I’d like to thank IHEEM, and Paul (Fenton, IHEEM’s President) and Bill and their teams particularly, for the opportunity to speak, because the HSE and IHEEM are very important stakeholders for SEAI.” 

William Walsh explained that SEAI’s key objective was ‘to collaborate with others to drive climate action, helping our public sector partners find their decarbonisation pathways’. He added: “SEAI and HSE work closely together through our Public Sector Partnerships in delivering sustainable healthcare estates.”