Overview

The Construction Sector in Ireland: The capacity and skills to build Ireland’s Future report exams the future workforce requirements for housing and critical infrastructure. Ireland’s construction sector currently employs over 177,600 workers but to meet the Government’s housing and infrastructure goals by 2030, we will need to add 100,000 additional roles. This equates to roughly 25,000 new workers per year to deliver the unprecedented pipeline of investment planned between now and 2030.

The sector currently has approximately 54,400 fewer workers than at its 2007 peak, a deficit exacerbated by the exodus of talent following the 2008 financial crash, an ageing workforce (20% expected to retire in the next decade) and the need to attract more diverse talent into the sector.

Beyond general labour shortages, worker retention is further challenged by uncertainty surrounding project timelines.

David Howard, Director of PII points out that “while the required scale is considerable, several opportunities exist. Arguably the most important is how we attract and retain talent for Irish projects. One of the greatest impediments caused by how we deliver infrastructure is that Irish talent often finds itself assigned to international projects due to delays or uncertainty at home. Improving timelines, particularly for public sector projects will enhance our ability to keep talent in Ireland.

Ireland’s approach must also be underpinned by ensuring diversity and inclusion are at the heart of workforce development, whether through updating critical skills visas to include essential construction work or improving pathways for greater female participation. Key to this will also be ramping up our apprenticeship models and maximising new ways of working through AI adoption and the wider use of Modern Methods of Construction.”