Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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Question 83: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if her attention has been drawn to warnings (details supplied) that some 55,000 construction jobs could be lost by the end of 2010; her views on the accuracy of the forecast; the steps she will take to prevent such job losses; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [13347/09]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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The current global economic situation continues to change rapidly adding a considerable degree of uncertainty to the accuracy of forecasts, nationally and internationally. There has, however, been a significant downturn in construction related activity since the beginning of 2008. The Quarterly National Household Survey or QNHS, which is published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and measures overall employment and unemployment, indicates that employment in the construction industry has decreased by 45,500 over the 12 month period to the fourth quarter of 2008, to a current total of 233,100. Other recent provisional data released by the CSO also indicates that the volume of output in the building and construction sector decreased by 26.7% in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared with the fourth quarter of 2007 and the numbers employed in private firms in the construction industry decreased by 21.9% in December 2008 from December 2007.

A lower level of residential investment was a key factor depressing activity in 2008 with completions of new homes amounting to approximately 50,000, around one-third lower than in the previous year. The Department of Finance is projecting a further decline of around 60% in new house completions to a level of 20,000 units this year. Other parts of construction — especially commercial — look set to decline also. During 2009, the ESRI expect industrial (including building) output to fall by 5.8 per cent. Within this figure, it is forecast that building output will decline by 25 per cent, as the house-building decline is compounded by a fall in commercial building. The Government has put in place a number of initiatives to deal with the slowdown and subsequent job losses in the construction sector.

The National Insulation Programme for Economic Recovery was launched by my colleagues the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government on 8 February 2009. The scheme will invest €100 million this year in unlocking the huge potential of energy efficiency in our economy. The three-strand insulation programme will cut heating bills for householders, reduce carbon emissions and create thousands of jobs both directly and indirectly over the course of 2009.

My Department continues to work closely with FÁS, the National Training and Employment Authority, in responding to the current slowdown in the economy as a whole, including the construction sector. I have already announced the creation of an additional 51,000 new training places under the FÁS Training Initiatives Strategy. Some of these courses have been specifically developed to meet the emerging need for qualified workers in Sustainable Energy Technologies. These courses include Solar Panel Installation, Geo-thermal heating and Biomass heating and Building Energy Rating. There are also some courses in development, which relate to this sector such as Micro Electricity Generation, Intelligent Building Systems Control, Thermal Insulation and Passive Housing and Air Permeability Testing of Buildings.

FÁS will continue to work in close collaboration with the Construction Industry Federation and other key stakeholders to encourage redundant construction workers to seek re-training in skills, which are in short supply in the economy. Current initiatives include the establishment of a training fund to enable timely identification of training and re-training needs for low skilled and redundant craft workers and the continued provision of retraining opportunities for redundant construction workers.