Housing is the most important issue in the general election for young people but there has been relatively little discussion about where Ireland will find the workers who are supposed to build all the houses being promised by Government and Opposition parties.
Every party has made extravagant claims about the number of homes they will build in the next government – Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have agreed a joint figure of 303,000 homes by 2030, 60,000 a year, and the other parties are promising something similar.
There is a conspicuous absence of expertise in construction among the political classes – none of the housing spokespeople in any of the main parties have any experience in the industry.
Those working in the industry are sceptical about all the parties’ plans. At the Siptu sectoral conference in Waterford last Thursday, HGV driver Anthony Cunningham dismissed the parties’ promises as “rubbish – there isn’t the manpower there”.
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He has been in the industry for 26 years. Back in the Celtic Tiger years, he was often working Saturdays and Sundays, but the industry is noticeably smaller now.
As subcontractors are often the only ones involved in big housing projects, there isn’t the scope for individual tradespeople to make big money, he believes. Instead, many of them are poorly paid and go abroad when they get the opportunity.
“Wages and conditions are very bad in our sector.”
Darren Dillon, who works in Banagher Precast in Co Offaly, says the construction industry is at full stretch already.
“I don’t know where this level of skilled labour is coming from. There are already shortages across the board, steel fixers, crane operators, welders, mechanics, you name it.”
He says the Celtic Tiger surge which saw a peak of 90,000 houses being built in 2006 couldn’t have happened without the mass influx of construction workers from eastern Europe.
“In Banagher in the mid-2000s there were 250 Polish and Portuguese steel fixers and now there isn’t more than 30 left,” he says.
“If you have five guys sharing a house and the rent goes up, it’s not such a problem but if you are a construction worker with a wife and child, it’s a different story. It becomes unaffordable especially with low pay and they go back to their own countries. I’ve seen it at first hand.”
Anthony McGuinness, a painter and decorator, says the industry will not attract young people while the money paid to apprentices is so low. It’s €7.42 an hour in the first year, rising to €11.12 an hour in the second year.
“The price of a breakfast roll is €7. Your bus ticket is €30 a week. If you are an apprentice, you’re coming out with €190 a week. Half your wages are gone before you give your mother or your father any money.”
There are young people coming out of school at the age of 16 who would normally enter the trades early, but they are being deterred by the paltry offering for an apprentice, he believes.
There is also a reluctance among private companies to take on 16-year-olds until they are 18 by which stage many of those who have left school are doing something different. The attractiveness of a trade needs to be emphasised more, he says.
“We are starting to realise that a trade is as good as a bank job. All the bank jobs and the office jobs are being lost. What do we need to do in this country? We need to build 50,000 houses a year. The best thing is to get a trade. You’ll always be working.”
At the conference in Waterford Siptu representatives in the industry voted unanimously to support the setting up of a state construction company.
“We know how the industry operates,” said the proposer of the motion Willie O’Shaughnessy who works in concrete. He listed the many ways in which he believes the industry needs to change to attract the huge number of workers needed to address the housing crisis.
They include poor wages, lack of job security, exploitative subcontractors and developers whose profit margins are driving up house prices.
Siptu deputy general secretary Greg Ennis says the incoming government has to think big. Pay in the sector has increased the basic rate by 28 per cent since 2017, but it will not be enough to get Irish tradespeople to return home. The next government needs to think of tax breaks for construction or an enhanced housing payment.
Who is going to house the housebuilders, he asks.
“Where are the labour resources to do all of this? There has to be a carrot to get these people back. Why would you come back if you have no place to live and renting is extortionate?”
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