Dr. Tom McDonnell:

Just to add one point to that, in terms of labour market policy we need to make construction a much more attractive sector. Historically, it has been considered very volatile and that is certainly the case in Ireland because of what happened in the lead up to 2008.

Not enough people are choosing construction as the occupation they will take on at 18 years of age.

My colleague, Mr. Nugent, is doing his PhD on over-qualification in the Irish economy. He can talk about which sectors are generating overqualified workers. Even within the labour market, it is wrong to think of it as a block. Particular people have certain skills. Certain sectors and functions within the economy do different things. In my view, we have an insufficient number of people who have construction skills. One of our public policy goals at the moment should be to increase the supply of construction workers and make it a really attractive sector. That can be done through dealing with issues like bogus self-employment, making sure that wages in the sector are sufficiently strong and signalling to people that it is not going to be a volatile or a boom-or-bust sector in terms of housing or whatever that might be. A long-term infrastructure plan can be part of that.

We need to signal to people that areas like retrofitting are going to be the jobs of the future for the next 20 years and that if they skill up in that area they will have a guaranteed job and will never be unemployed. That is very important. Again, it is about the multiannual budgeting piece and signalling that this is a valuable career. It is an area of the economy where, over the next 20 or 30 years, construction will continue to be quite strong because of the climate change transition will be multi-decade in nature. A lot of it is about building infrastructure. We need to massively increase housing in order to tackle the housing crisis. Construction, along with sectors like caring, are those that will continue to grow and need more workers into the future. We would see that as an important point. Perhaps it is beyond the budget.