Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I am sorry for side-tracking things into a discussion about construction. It was only because the witnesses had quite a lot about construction workers in that section they talked about. They did hint at policy in terms of that because the council, rightly, recognises the capacity constraints that are a serious problem for us. Professor McMahon more than hinted at it when referring to the policy levers available and looking at the various possible ways we could access more construction labour, while seeing the difficulties in a whole number of areas for getting them, and these were identified. It was said we are not going to attract many from the rest of the EU because it is not as attractive here anymore and that many of the people who left the country are probably going to come back and so on. Professor McMahon went through the list, the last two of which are the apprenticeship area, and said there are limits to this. I believe we need to ramp that up dramatically but there may be limits to how much we can do that. Reference was also made to non-EU labour and that maybe this would be, to quote the report, a possible lever the Government could utilise. I agree completely with this but I would like to hear Professor McMahon elaborate on that.

Obviously the issue of immigration has become very contentious. I find it ridiculous and laughable that people are talking about the country being full when we are chronically short of workers in almost every sector. It is kind of preposterous but some people are pursuing that narrative. Maybe the witnesses would like to say a little bit more. The report of the council points to that as a possible policy lever, and it seems to me a very logical and sensible direction to look at to deal with those capacity constraints. The Government has been bandying around a figure, which is a good figure to put out, of the tax contribution of immigrants to this country. I believe it is €3.5 billion per year. People are saying immigrants are a cost when actually they are putting huge amounts of money into the country. On the same theme do the witnesses have any picture figures, or does anybody compile figures, of the GDP impact, or any economic measurements, of the positive impact of immigrants? I would say it is a positive impact when you looks at it because they are actually adding to the economic wealth of the country. It would be useful to have those figures in the context of the quite difficult debates that are being had. Are they objectively adding to the wealth of the country, which I suggest they probably are?