Building sector seeking rapid return of emigrants

Recruiters are seeking to persuade skilled Irish emigrants in Australia, New Zealand and Canada to return home to pursue job opportunities in the recovering construction sector.

As new Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures pointed to a rise of 22,400 in the number of people working full-time in construction in the year to March, recruiters point to a shortage of engineers, site managers and architects as activity picks up in the sector.

“All these people are in demand now. The team here are spending their life scouring not just Ireland, but they’re in touch with our offices in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Poland and Dubai,” said Richard Eardley, managing director of recruitment agency Hays Ireland.

Daily contact

“They’re in daily contact with our operations in those countries and are trying to reach Irish people who left and who aren’t yet aware that things have quite radically changed here and that the prospects are really really good.

“About half of the jobs we’re filling, we’re filling with people who’ve spent most of the last five or six years abroad.”

Mr Eardley said rising demand had been seen all year. “Since we came back in January, things have heated up quite noticeably,” he said.

“They’re not coming back in droves yet, but what we find when we’re talking to people is that they’re about 12 months behind in terms of their perception of what the employment market is like.

“They’re aware we’re out of recession and that things are looking better, but they’re not aware of the amount of work that is available and that the outlook now is better than at any time for the last eight years .”

Mr Eardley said the business was “job rich and candidate poor” at present. “There’s more than 100 live vacancies in Dublin at the moment. That’s without really trying to find every job that exists there.”

CSO figures published yesterday also point to an increase of 2,800 in the number of people working in a temporary capacity in construction. Although the sector is the fastest-growing in employment terms, the number of people working was still a third lower in the first three months of 2015 than in the same period in 2009.

Unemployment rate

With the unemployment rate below 10 per cent, the CSO said the number of people working was 1.93 million in the first quarter of this year.

This represented an increase of 41,300, or 2.2 per cent, over the same time in 2014

Despite the advancing recovery, the number of people in work in the first quarter of 2015 is still 3.4 per cent lower than in the same period in 2009.

Mr Eardley also points to high demand in Ireland for people with European language skills, particularly German and the Nordic languages, for people skilled in the social media and digital media sectors.