Sir, – Ireland is a prosperous country and my understanding is that this prosperity was to be shared – that workers and potential workers would benefit from our market economy just as companies do. I was shocked that the ESRI is now calling for construction trades such as carpentry and plumbing to be open to non-EU workers (Business, December 9th).
These are skilled and well-paid jobs that many already here would be eager to do – and surely it must be the responsibility of construction firms to assure, through apprenticeships and coordination with our educational establishments, that they have sufficient employees with these skills.
In the present shortage – due to companies failing to develop sufficient staff – wages must rise and companies must use their workers more efficiently: that is how markets work. In the circumstances, the ESRI might have called for temporarily bringing in specialists to train workers already here to do these important jobs, but to deny us the opportunity to enter or progress in these fields cannot really be justified.
I noted that in an earlier article (News, December 1st) the State is to issue visas to 1,000 homecare workers from next month. Again, with sufficient pay and creative management of this important work I suspect that this would not have been necessary, and the irony is that if Irish people were doing this work, then the plumbers and carpenters needed to build the extra 1,000 houses could have stayed home.
Employers must take responsibility – and when they fail, pay the price – for assuring they have the skilled workers they need. If we do not develop and enhance the skills of our population then only those who own the economy will benefit from it. – Yours, etc,
WILLIAM HUNT,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.