Dr. Tom McDonnell:

It is a great question. We have far fewer construction workers now than we had in the past. As the Senator is aware, one of the things that happened was that construction came to be perceived as an extremely volatile and risky profession. It is not, but because of the great financial crash and because such an avalanche of jobs were lost and there was such devastation, people were told for a decade not to go into construction and we ended up with a shortfall of construction workers. Because we are close to full employment, the incentive for people to switch careers to something totally different like construction, with very specific skills, is challenging. First, how do we convince existing workers to become construction workers, because the pool of unemployed workers is quite low? Second, how do we convince people in their teens and early 20s to choose construction?

The third possibility is how we get people to come from other countries, whether returning Irish or others. We will probably have to give them incentives to come. We must find a place for them to live, which is a case of the chicken and the egg. We have to make it attractive for people to go into construction, whether it is pay, terms and conditions or pension benefits down the line.