Mr. Seán Armstrong:

I am happy to take that question from a general construction perspective. The expert group on future skills needs published a report last year identifying what the skills needs would be to support Housing for All. It did a report on low carbon as well, but there is obviously a lot of crossover between new-build construction and retrofitting. As for new builds, Housing for All identified that there are currently 40,000 construction workers working directly on housing, that to deliver 33,000 dwellings per year we would need 67,500 construction workers and that, by 2030, since the numbers ramp up and it is an average of 33,000 units per year, we would need 80,000 construction workers. Then the expert group did a breakdown of that by trade and it was found to be across all trades: electricians, plumbers, plasterers, blocklayers and general operatives. All trades needed, if not exactly to double, to increase their numbers more or less twofold.