Dr. Robert Sweeney:

One of the challenges is that, despite the fact that, as I mentioned, our living standards are high, they are not as high as they were relative to eastern European countries. While the gap has not closed, it has narrowed. As a result, there is less of an incentive for Polish construction workers to come to Ireland to alleviate some of those shortages. That is one of the challenges we have in attracting construction workers. The wages in the Irish construction sector as not as high as they used to be relative to wages in Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and so on. As well as trying to encourage people, both men and women, into the sector, it may be important to see if we can get non-EU workers to work in our construction sector to alleviate some of those shortages.