Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, thank Fianna Fáil for bringing this important topic to the fore here today. There is a shortage of people with skills in the building industry, such as plasterers, block layers, carpenters, electricians or plumbers. Clearly, there is a deficit and it needs to be addressed.

At an early age in the secondary schools there should be some discussion with students to enlighten them that to have a skill or a trade is important. I am not saying that people should not go to third level college, but it is not for everyone. There is a place for everyone on this planet. There is a place for those who go to college but there is also a place for those with skills and trades.

There is definitely a shortage of people to build houses. As I said, electricians, plumbers, block layers, plasterers and carpenters are scarce. It is driving up the cost of building houses. We have spoken often in this Chamber about the housing crisis. When a company's tender is successful, whether to build one house, 20 houses or 100 houses, the problem arises of having access to people with the skills available because the jobs may be in one part of the county or the country and skilled people and tradespeople are needed to do the work. Since the bust, we have a reduced workforce. It is made up, by and large, of older people, with fewer of them, and they are doing the work now because we do not have skilled people.

Likewise, there is definitely a shortage of drivers, whether lorry drivers or bus drivers. I myself know how hard it is to get drivers because we have a small company. There should be advice and assistance given to teenagers coming up. It is costly to do the driving test to be a lorry driver, an articulated lorry driver or a large coach driver and young fellows do not have that kind of funding available to them at that stage in their lives. They need assistance and the Government should be providing some financial assistance or supports to help them to become qualified in whatever field.

For example, we talked about excavator drivers, who are very scarce. There is much that we legislators and politicians, in particular the Government, could do to help these people to give them choice. This should be relayed to them before they go to college. If they go to college, they usually stay three or four years, and it is hard to ask them to go back for another year or two before starting out life in the trades or becoming part of the skilled workforce.

The Construction Industry Federation is calling for more apprenticeships to fill the gap. It states that 3,000 new apprenticeships are needed every year, but only one third of that number of places is being taken up. We should be doing something to encourage them. As I said, if there is a shortage of builders, mechanics and so on, it will drive up the cost of everything. There is a real need to address the issue of apprenticeships and young people in the trades and other skilled operations that have to be carried out to keep our country running.

The hospitality industry is very important. We need an increasing number of staff in that area but it is becoming increasingly difficult to get those staff. In my local newspaper last week, I saw that a local restaurant in Killorglin was not going to operate for certain hours of the day because it could not get staff to keep it going. The owners decided that as they could not get the staff, they would cut the hours and provide fewer meals in the restaurant.

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