Quarter of building workers to lose jobs
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A QUARTER of all construction workers will lose their jobs by the end of next year, a confidential new report reveals.
Massive job losses in the country's largest industry will send unemployment soaring and leave tens of thousands of young men on the dole.
A total of 65,400 of the 279,000 currently employed in construction will be forced out of work as the economic downturn worsens and the value of new property plummets.
The report, carried out by the employment and training authority FAS into construction and contracting, is one of the gloomiest job forecasts produced to date.
Obtained by the Irish Independent, it shows those set to lose their jobs include:
l 35,800 craft workers such as bricklayers, carpenters, and plasterers.
l 9,000 non-craft skilled workers (scaffolders, roofers etc).
l 10,600 general workers.
l 2,100 professionals (archi-tects, quantity surveyors etc).
The report predicts the losses will be accompanied by the creation of up to 20,600 jobs in other areas of construction, including building projects earmarked under the National Development Plan (NDP).
However, the Government faces a huge challenge to retrain redundant workers and to provide training outlets for thousands of young men, who had planned a career in construction.
Builders, carpenters and plasterers will be the trades most adversely affected by the huge job cuts.
It is expected that many of those who will lose their jobs will be non-nationals, who will leave the industry and the country to seek work.
It is also likely that many Irish construction workers will look abroad for work, marking a return to a trend that had disappeared during the boom years.
Redundant workers who decide to stay here will not find work easily, and will need retraining.
The slump in the prices of new houses and apartments is already having a disastrous effect on apprentice recruitment in construction, which has been slashed by two-thirds in the space of just two years.
Just 590 construction apprentices were taken on in the first four months of this year, compared to 1,282 last year and 1,538 in the same period in 2006.
Apprenticeships were enormously attractive for young people -- mostly male -- in recent years. Two years ago, there were almost 30,000 in the system. But that figure is falling rapidly, the new figures show.
The employment and training authority FAS is urgently examining new initiatives to deal with the crisis.
Institutes of Technology and FAS training centres, meanwhile, will have to perform a juggling act to simultaneously reduce capacity and backlogs.
The bleak jobs forecast comes against the backdrop of a raft of reports suggesting a bleak outlook in construction.
Figures released last week by Permanent TSB/ESRI revealed that house prices fell 1.1pc in April, bringing the annual rate of decline to 9.2pc.
New house prices are falling at "almost double the national rate", according to the data.
The construction sector reached its peak at the end of 2006, when it provided direct employment to 287,000, built over 88,000 houses, and produced €36bn worth of output.
Decline
There are 279,000 people employed in the sector now, but this will decline sharply over the next year and is not expected to pick up again until 2013.
The losses will be offset, to a limited extent, by the creation of new jobs in other areas, including projects under the National Development Plan.
These include 7,000 jobs in residential repair and maintenance, 6,900 in general contracting and 6,700 in civil engineering.
Repairs and maintenance jobs are expected to be particularly strong as a result of the Energy Performance Building Directive. From January it will be mandatory for anyone who wishes to sell or rent property to make an energy-rating assessment available to potential purchasers or renters.
Many of the 900,000 houses built before 1991 would not even register on the rating scale, according to the research.
The report, prepared by FAS's sub-committee on the industry also expects a modest rise in the number of professionals, particularly civil engineers, securing employment.
- John Walshe Education Editor
