I welcome the Minister of State to the House. The Labour Party supports this proposal for Ireland to opt in and be involved in the EU talent pool. As the Minister of State said, we have been very fortunate that many hard-working people have decided to come to, and live and work in Ireland in recent years. They are not just from our EU neighbours but also from outside the EU. As the Minister of State said, go to any hospital or nursing home in this country and you will find excellent staff from far afield. We really would be lost without them. They have contributed massively to our economy and our well-being.
Especially given the recent political and social climate, it is important to remember that we need migrant workers. As colleagues said, we are also very fortunate to be going through a period of more or less full employment with a job available for anyone who wants it at the moment. In some ways that may be a bit of a double-edged sword, particularly for small businesses. We have heard a lot in recent months about the struggle small business owners are facing in certain sectors, particularly the likes of hospitality. There are serious concerns in those areas around staffing. Of course, there are other issues but staffing is a major one.
Enabling employers, particularly small business owners, to access a larger talent pool and promoting legal pathways and opportunities for job seekers from outside the EU are certainly very welcome steps. We also need to be conscious of and realistic about how our economy and labour markets are structured given what is coming down the pipeline. We are already seeing the effects of increasing digitalisation of jobs that would have traditionally been performed by workers and we are moving towards the creation of a greener, more sustainable economy. Both of these developments will require specific skill sets in certain sectors and they will force us to restructure our economy. That will inevitably lead to gaps in our labour market which ideally we could fill domestically but, of course, that will not always be possible.
We also need to be conscious that we have an ageing population. Our working-age population is shrinking which has the potential to put serious pressure on our social welfare and State-provision systems. The EU talent pool could be an invaluable resource to ensure the health and sustainability of our economy. However, this resource is unlikely to be operational until 2028. While I accept that, I want to focus my attention on the most pressing of the shortages we are facing in our labour market - the shortage of construction workers to build houses. We know from the Government's own figures that we need to be building between 50,000 and 60,000 houses per year to keep up with demand and bring the housing crisis under control. In 2006 when housing output hit its peak during the boom times, with over 93,000 homes built, we had around 270,000 workers directly employed in construction. As we are all too aware that workforce was decimated after the crash reaching a low of less than 100,000 in 2013. As that figure is now around 170,000, progress has been, and is being, made in terms of the recovery of the construction workforce but we are still nowhere near the levels we need.
Obviously labour shortages are not the only thing holding up house building, but they are placing a significant barrier to this capacity. We need to get this sorted and while we welcome the proposal for an EU talent pool, as I already said, we welcome that this will also provide a greater opportunity to bring workers from outside the EU into our construction workforce. Increasing our efforts to recruit from abroad cannot wait until 2028. We can and must do more now.
The Government's careers in construction action plan estimates that almost 51,000 workers will need to be recruited in the construction sector by 2030. Why were only 1,300 work permits issued in the construction sector last year? I note that the number of apprentices has increased. That is a very welcome development, but not to the extent that we can rely solely on new entrants into the sector from the domestic labour market alone. We need more people coming from abroad and 1,300 permits will not cut it, especially if the Government intends to fulfil its commitment as contained in its construction action plan.
I will repeat a call the Labour Party has been making for some time now. We need to see construction and the craft trades added to the critical skills list. It was good that last year's list added some construction-related jobs, but these were mostly marginal in nature or were engineering jobs.
We support this proposal. It is a good measure. It is important that we recognise and value those who come from third countries to live and contribute here. However, I ask that the Government give serious consideration to the Labour Party’s call to add more construction workers to our critical skills list in the interim.
