Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 December 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Skills Needed to Support the Economic Recovery Plan: Discussion

Mr. Tony Donohoe:

We do not have statistics on that and we have not surveyed companies on it. I know anecdotally, particularly from the leads in many of the foreign direct investment, FDI, companies, that housing is a huge issue in mobility and attracting people as well as retaining them. I do not have any statistics for the Deputy. I am not sure if it has been surveyed, but it is probably something that should be surveyed. An area where we have other challenges is getting people to build these houses. We are looking at 33,000 housing units in the Housing for All strategy. We currently have approximately 40,000 workers on new builds. We need an additional 25,000 units in the next five years and that will peak at 80,000 by the end of the strategy. Apart from its overall impact on the economy, on the Deputy's previous point around wages, it feeds into higher wages ultimately and thereby a serious competitiveness issue. There is the other issue of finding workers to build this stock and this will be exacerbated by our very necessary climate action plan. We tend to fish in the same pool for those construction and construction related skills. Does Dr. Power have anything to add to that?