Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I accept all that but the harsh reality is that the economy does need labour. There are considerable shortages in certain areas, including construction, agriculture, hospitality and transport. There are now shortages across the health care sector.

There are labour shortages across huge swathes of the economy. If one wishes to highlight an indictment or failure of policy one need only look at the apprenticeship programmes. There are simply not enough people either applying for or expressing an interest in key areas of the crafts and trades. That alone indicates there has been a failure of policy in terms of assessing the demand and putting in place policies that would alleviate the pressures that will invariably arise. Take the example of construction. We have a housing requirement of approximately 35,000 new houses per year but before we start building any houses there are already labour shortages in the construction industry. That is how far behind we are. We also do not have a pool of labour available from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, as we had previously, because their economies have converged with the European economies.

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