Dr. Peter Rigney:

One of the apprenticeships I mentioned speaks to pathways and to a shortage of engineers. It is the electrical apprenticeship at Limerick Institute of Technology, which one can only get into if one is an electrician. The best way to build level 7 engineers is to take level 6 electricians and train them, mainly at the weekend. Purely anecdotally, many multinationals come in with the necessary money and hire hundreds of engineers. They then allocate them tasks which one does not need an engineer to do. Young engineers say they find it difficult to get continuing professional development, CPD, points. They are handling compliance, quality assurance and ticking boxes and it is not real engineering. Companies would probably be better off handling compliance and quality assurance with somebody who has been in the industry for a time, is cute and knows the scams people try to get around quality assurance box-ticking, which we all do, to be honest. There is a global shortage of engineers. Multinationals come in and have the money to hire them by the gross. There must be other ways to build them and some way to ask multinationals if they really need engineers for all these tasks. I know Engineers Ireland has an associate position at technician level which gives a pathway towards being a chartered engineer.

With regard to work permits, an interesting thing in the most recent interdepartmental group was that the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government was involved. It was not in the previous boom. The Department's attitude was to ask why companies were bringing in people to do work for which there are able people already here in houses. An issue this time with bringing people in from outside the country to do anything is how much more difficult it will be for existing workers to get or to pay for accommodation or to be condemned to four hours of commuting every day. All these things are linked. Traditionally, if we go back to the 19th century, employers built houses. Guinness built houses for its employees, as did many mills and railway companies.