Sir, – Una Mullally ("What sort of a future are we building for our capital city?", Opinion & Analysis, March 21st) poses a question about the style of construction that seems universal in our cities at present – why do builders not use bricks any more, preferring instead large sheets of glass or stone panels for facades?
Fashion and aesthetics aside, the likely answer is labour costs. Batu, the union which represents bricklayers, among other trades, got up on a high horse in the middle period of the boom, demanding high rates of pay for its skilled workers. Developers responded by reducing the amount of brick in their designs – lifting precast panels or pumping concrete into forms to make walls and facing them with slabs of marble, granite, sandstone, etc, to make them pretty, where necessary. Glass facades can serve functional purposes too, facilitating environmentally friendly passive lighting and heating systems.
With fewer bricks to be laid, some skilled workers found themselves at a loose end in the midst of Ireland’s biggest ever construction boom, and many had already left the country for greener pastures by the time the bubble burst. With few skilled bricklayers available now, and with alternative systems well established, the current crop of developers have little incentive to return on a large scale to the era of brick facades. – Yours, etc,
JOHN THOMPSON,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7.