Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Who will be in charge of delivering on those 30 actions? Will it be the Department alone or will it be the usual troika of the Departments of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Education and Skills and Social Protection? How will we measure those actions?

We all know the decline that has taken place in the sector. The Minister for Social Protection has confirmed to me in reply to a parliamentary question that one in four of those on the live register - 109,000 people - formerly worked in construction. Of those, 53,000 had previously worked in a trade, so they had some element of skill. It might be a skill that needs to be updated for use in a new industry so we should focus on them. Plant and machinery operatives made up 10,000 of that number, with 1,500 working as architects, town planners or surveyors. These are high level qualifications and with some creativity they could be used in other sectors of the economy. Construction has fallen to an enormous extent, although there has been some job growth in the sector in the first months of this year, but these are still skilled people. There will be an upturn and there is no sense in our arriving back in the situation we had in the last upturn, where because of skills shortages, labour costs went through the roof.

How many of the 30 actions address re-skilling and updating skills and how many address growth in employment? Will the 30 actions serve to address the background of the cuts in the capital budget that directly impact on the sector?

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