Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

It is a difficulty in that many people have emigrated. We have talked to our major debtors, who say they have the names and e-mail addresses of all the people who used to work for them who went abroad to the UK, Australia and the Middle East, or wherever the work was when there were no jobs here. They said that a lot of these people would definitely come back to Ireland and would prefer to work in Ireland and raise their children here. The issue is that they are not going to come back if they only see a 12- to 18-month pipeline of work. If they could see there was a way to build product for five years, it would give them a bit of certainty, and I believe many of these people would come back.

There is certainly a scarcity of people, particularly as there have not been many people working in the trades during the recession, but all of our big clients have said that if they knew they had five years' work, they would get the people. It would take them a while to ramp up in terms of delivery, but they have said they will get the people if they have that certainty.