The Minister for Trade Enterprise and Employment Michael Martin has denied the construction industry is facing a crisis and claimed that public spending will protect the sector from shrinking by a third.
The minister's comments, which were backed by industry lobbyists, came after the chief executive of the Higher Education Authority (HEA), Tom Boland, warned that up to 80,000 young construction workers are at risk of unemployment because they lacked educational qualifications.
Siptu, meanwhile, called for a change in education and training to help prevent an employment crisis in the future.
Siptu president Jack O'Connor called for a shift in education and training to tackle the prospect of large-scale unemployment caused by a downturn in the construction industry.
Fears for jobs in the construction sector
Data has shown that a significant number of early school leavers were relying on the construction boom for employment.
"On the one hand we have Fás telling us that we need 100,000 more graduates in the workforce by 2010, and on the other we have the 2006 Census showing us there are 82,238 construction workers with only Junior Cert, or even no qualifications," said Mr O'Connor.
Mr O'Connor called for an increase in the level of investment in retraining at all levels, with paid study leave introduced as an entitlement for the workforce. "The longer we leave it, the greater the problem will become, and we could see long term unemployment returning to the levels we had to endure in the 1980s," he said.
However, Mr Martin said he was confident several major infrastructure projects would help ease the anticipated crisis.
"There will be continued pick up in the National Development Plan and on the infrastructural side. That won't absorb it all. But we would urge all young people to complete their second level education," he said.
The Construction Industry Federation (CIF) insisted warnings of huge losses were an exaggeration, and said the sector was performing strongly even in the face of difficulties.
"It is the potential for 80,000 loses... We think that overstates the situation perhaps quite significantly," said Marty Whelan, CIF head of public affairs.
"But the industry as a whole is actually growing and performing quite strongly on the back of public projects."
According to the CIF, €84 billion will be invested over the next five years on public projects with construction being a huge part of that. The lobby group also said 280,000 people are working in the sector and many firms had diversified and shown the ability to adapt to new working environments.
Speaking today, Mr Boland said he was trying to convey the importance of education at a time when parents and young people were filling out their CAO forms.
"The reality is for Ireland we need increasingly more high skilled graduates, high skilled people for our economy, and the kind of lower skilled jobs in the construction industry, there is a relatively short life time for them," he said.
"The more we attract into areas like construction . . . the less people we have for the high-skilled areas we need," he said.
Mr Boland added it was not a comment on the construction workers but rather it was about their future and how they could secure a better future for themselves and their families.
