Higher Education Minister Simon Harris has been allocated €750,000 to set up a scheme which seeks to attract Irish construction workers abroad home amid an ongoing shortage of workers in the sector.
The scheme aims to bring back Irish involved in construction work in cities like London, New York, and Sydney where outreach programmes will be offered in efforts to attract them home.
“We want to send a message to the Irish people who may have left because there weren’t jobs in construction in the past, there weren’t jobs when the economy crashed, that Ireland is a very different place now. Ireland needs you to come home, that Ireland needs you to help build homes,”
“If you wish to come home, there are jobs here: well paid, reliable jobs,” he said.
While direct financial incentives will not be made available for Irish abroad the minister’s department is examining what could be done to make jobs in construction more attractive.
Minister Harris said that according to research conducted by the Department of Higher Education, some 50,000 extra construction workers across all trades were necessary in the next 10 years.
“We are currently revising those targets in line with the revised housing targets and an increased use of modern methods of construction but we will need more people to work here over the next number of years,” he said.
“That is why we are currently considering a number of measures to boost the labour market, including peer-to-peer campaigns for people aged 18 to 24 to show the value of careers in construction and working with guidance counsellors also.”
Commenting on the lack of women working in construction Harris said, “Representation, including visits to construction sites, could go a long way to address the gender stereotyping and prevalent fear among this cohort that construction is an inappropriate industry for women,”
