Staff shortages and a tightening labour market may constrain the development of the tourism industry, Mr Eamonn McKeon, the chairman of State tourism training and recruitment agency CERT said yesterday.

Preliminary findings of its employment survey, published with the agency's end-of-year review, show the number of firms recording job vacancies continued to rise across all sectors and that up to 50 per cent of businesses within the sector have expansion plans for the coming year. Mr McKeon expressed concern at the growing incidence of businesses recording vacancies.

The survey also forecast that staff from overseas, who make up 6 per cent of the sector's workforce, would make up 2025 per cent over the next five years.

At the publication of the end-of-year review, Mr McKeon said employment across key sectors of the tourism and hospitality industry grew by 5 per cent this year to 184,000.

The increase in CERT recruitment during 2000 was achieved largely through initiatives such as targeting women wishing to return to work and the longerterm unemployed, Mr McKeon said. Firms are also recruiting overseas in greater numbers, according to Mr McKeon. Staff retention, running at around 25-30 per cent when the seasonality element is taken into account, is a major problem for the industry.

"It is higher than we would like it to be. You'll always have some element of turnover but the bigger problem we're worried about is people leaving the industry for what they perceive to be better jobs," said Mr McKeon.

He conceded there was still a perception that jobs in the hotel, restaurant and tourism sectors were badly paid.

"There is still work to be done on that perception. But, in fact, it has moved on substantially in the past couple of years for a variety of reasons. The tight labour market means that people don't have to work for low wages anymore and the introduction of the minimum wage made it clear what people are entitled to," he said.

Quality employer charters introduced by the hotel and restaurant sectors had also helped, he said.

"The reality is different but the perceptions are still dangerous. We still have to grapple with those perceptions. We have to work with second-level students, careers guidance teachers and the public at large to convince them the opportunities are there, the seasonality element has faded away, the rates of pay have improved and there is a good career in the sector," he said.

Under its strategic plan, CERT planned to increase the number of trained entrants by 50 per cent, he said. But staffing problems and turnover would persist for some time unless the industry could succeed in repositioning its career offering to entrants, while at the same time raising productivity and lifting its product offering to the customer as a means of improving the bottom line, said Mr McKeon.

CERT recently completed the first phase of a major bench marking programme, identifying best practices in international hospitality designed to improve operational performance within the industry, he said.

"There is some evidence that the skill level may be under pressure and evidence of some slippage but, at this stage, I wouldn't be alarmed about it. When there's slippage and you're in denial, I think you will have a problem developing. But all sectors are conscious they have to develop more training," he said.