Mr. Micheál O'Connor:

I thank Deputy Fleming for his questions. On his first question, about companies based in the State working on public contracts, I suppose the real nucleus of that has been the public procurement process, in which there are selection criteria that are based on European legislation. That has informed the selection criteria to make them broad and not prejudice companies of any particular origin. However, it is a fact, given the circumstances in which the construction sector finds itself, that we as a broader economy should be looking to benefit indigenous companies. It is open to organisations to achieve this in terms of how the selection criteria are weighted - that is, a weighting based on whether a company is local or whether it provides employment in Ireland and operates within the Irish economy. That is something that, potentially, could be looked at by public contracting authorities in terms of how they weight their selection criteria. I agree that, potentially, there is an opportunity to do that.

On the Deputy's second point regarding upskilling or recruiting younger members into the construction sector, that is something that we would welcome. Certainly, the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, along with a number of other professional bodies in the construction sector, is always keen to train and improve the skills of younger professionals and members, and, potentially, there is no reason contracts, both public and private, could not be structured in such a way that contractors would be required to employ a minimum number of apprentices or a certain selection of employees whereby they would be upskilled or given internships or something of that nature to bring them back into the construction sector and provide them with skills. Certainly, it is a issue about which we are concerned. The society of chartered surveyors recently published a report on the shortage of skills. Something that is becoming a concern is the lack of students going into construction courses at third level. It is often forgotten, when IDA Ireland and other bodies speak about bringing international companies to Ireland - although this is great for Ireland, which has been lucky down through the years in attracting probably more than its fair share of substantial heavy-hitting international clients - that the Irish construction sector has an indigenous skill force in construction for those high-technology industries, such as the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries, and for us to remain attractive to international investors we must maintain those necessary skills in Ireland. We must continue to enact proper training and proper college courses, have proper numbers going through the college courses and continue to develop those skills because they are crucial to our long-term forecast.