From 2004 onwards the numbers of new domestic entrants to the labour market will fall progressively and the economy can no longer look to natural labour supply, economist Mr Paul Tansey warned yesterday.
He predicted that the necessary growth in the Irish labour force must come from increasing the numbers of married women and older people taking up jobs again and encouraging net immigration.
Speaking at the Small Firms' Association annual conference in Dublin, Mr Tansey identified what he called the critical problem. He said the State is not facing a skills shortage but a general labour scarcity.
Echoing Mr Tansey's point, Mr John Lynch, chief executive of FAS, said even if the State training agency was to double its capacity, there are simply not enough workers available within the Irish market to meet the demand.
He pointed out that FAS is spending almost £4 million (€5 million) in a bid to attract up to 200,000 workers to the Republic over the next five years. It is planned to host a total of 13 major recruitment fairs in EU member states this year and FAS is in discussion with the education and training authorities in Estonia, Latvia, Hungary and the Czech Republic with a view to organising recruitment. Mr Lynch said FAS had succeeded in attracting about 5,000 craft workers annually into the State in recent years.
The debate on skills shortages has focused mainly on the high skills areas, Mr Lynch said, while the reality is there are many, if not more, labour shortages in the medium to low skill occupations.
He pointed to the retail sector. "There are 120,000 people working as sales assistants in Ireland compared to 9,000 computer professionals. While we are well on our way to filling the 1,600 vacancies for computer professionals, there is still a great deal of work to be done before we can fill the 8,000 vacancies for sales assistants."
Mr Lynch had some suggestions for employers. "You could look into recruiting people who are not normally considered to be job-seekers, such as older people and mothers who would consider taking up employment if the working arrangements were flexible enough," he said.
