Dr. Alan Power:

At the height of the boom, in 2006 or 2007, the CSO published a national survey on the allocation of personal public service numbers to foreign nationals, which it does every couple of years. In 2006-07, I think 50,000 foreign nationals were involved in the construction sector. In 2017-18, that figure was approximately 20,000 and we are finding that they are increasingly coming from what is defined as the EU25-EU27 countries. Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania were the traditional skills pool that we were drawing on prior to the crash. There is less propensity for Polish workers in particular to come to the Irish market now. They are challenging. We have the Housing for All targets as Mr. Donohoe outlined. We need to quadruple employment for residential retrofitting. That figure does not even include commercial retrofitting and public sector retrofitting.

We have other ambitions under Project Ireland 2040. It will require a major drive to enhance the attractiveness of construction careers in the domestic economy to make sure that we have a stable pipeline.

Regarding the impact of the crash-----