Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want to use my time in the Seanad today to perform a global call-out to the tradespeople of Ireland we lost through emigration over the past couple of decades. I would like the entire House to support me with this and I ask the Senators to reach out to their contacts in other countries about it. In particular, we lost many good people to Canada, Australia and England.

As a Government we have committed €4 billion per year to build social and affordable houses and we will not be able to do that without tradespeople. They are like the new national treasure. Every tradesperson I know cannot keep up with the demand for their work. The Government reckons there will be demand for 55,000 construction workers over the next 30 years and earnings in the construction sector grew by 8.2% annually in the second quarter of 2021, which is one of the highest increases in any sector in the country and well ahead of the average earning increases of 3.9%.

Tradespeople were not given the value or appreciation they earned before. Without them we would have no houses in which to live or any infrastructure. We need a global call-out to the diaspora. I have spoken to the Minister of State with responsibility for the diaspora about this, as well as the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. We need to do a call-out to our people all over the world to ask them to come home and help us to rebuild Ireland. We must build 300,000 affordable and social houses and we must retrofit 500,000 houses. We do not have enough tradespeople in Ireland now. They are earning good money, the wages are good and demand is high so now is a very good time for us to call them back. I want the House to support me in this global call-out, perhaps with the help of the Irish Postand our contacts overseas. We must tell our Irish tradespeople they are welcome home and there is much work for them. We need them to help rebuild this country.