Irish construction companies scour the Continent in search for building workers

Where do you go if your construction company needs to fill jobs in a hurry? Last weekend, it was Stockholm and in the next few weeks it will be Cologne, Birmingham and Wales. The Construction Industry Federation, FAS and a number of Irish contractors joined forces with the European Employment Service last weekend to stage a recruitment fair in Stockholm. Such is the pressure to find skilled labour that companies are willing to look further afield to get the labour they need.

The event in Sweden is one of a number to be organised by the CIF and FAS. "They are almost weekly events," according to Mr Peter McCabe, director of the business development unit and manpower services within the CIF. Some of the larger firms, he added, are staging recruitment drives "under their own steam".

The companies themselves are somewhat cautious about these events. "We are attending in Stockholm just to see what is out there," said a senior manager in one Irish firm. "It is a kind of fact-finding mission rather than a hard-ball recruiting drive."

Hard-ball may yet be on the cards, however. The industry continues to grow by leaps and bounds and shows little sign of abating. "The industry has been growing by eight to 12 per cent this year and about double the output from the last three years," stated Mr Michael Webb, managing partner at chartered quantity surveyors, Patterson, Kempster & Shortall.

The industry now employs 150,000, according to CIF figures, double the number in 1992. There have been about 40,000 housing starts annually over recent years and the heavy construction and office development areas have been very busy, helping to push the estimated annual output for this year up to £10 billion.

"We are seeing some evidence of skills shortages but it is nothing new to us, because of the rapid development of the industry during the 1990s," Mr McCabe said. "Nobody predicted this rapid growth."

The industry, he said, had done very well to source 60,000 workers over the past seven years. "There is no doubt that people came back to the industry from various sources." About 4,000 new apprentices are now recruited each year, so that in any given year there are up to 16,000 skilled workers training. Mr McCabe suggested however that there is little slack in the labour market at the moment. "We have probably exhausted the live register side of it," he said, yet the industry would need between 6,000 and 8,000 new workers, skilled and semiskilled, before the end of the year to meet current demand, he said.

This pressure is making the overseas option look more attractive despite all of the complex issues of unionisation, determining skills qualifications, and language barriers.

The demand reaches all levels, according to a spokesman for one Dublin contractor. "It applies to all the trades, to semi-skilled labour but also to all of the building professions and construction management," he said.

"I think a fair comment on it is we are experiencing a shortage, a tightness on the ground, but it hasn't caused us any delays, we are meeting our contract demands," he added.

HE, too, echoed the borderline nature of this however. "OK, we have to be selective in the type of work we have to go after. That would be a consideration." The UK was a traditional stomping ground for Irish labour and these workers moved to and fro on the basis of job availability. The UK market has been slack over the past few years and recruitment drives for ex-pats have been intensive over the past few years. "We have certainly skimmed that pool," Mr Webb said, and much of the local labour available to Irish builders has been mopped up. "The industry has grown exceptionally fast and continues to grow. The wonder is that the industry has been able to cope at all."

He sees shortages of labour in all trades including carpenters, plasterers, electricians, plumbers and painters, "you name it". "All this has led to a situation where there are significant skills shortages."

HE sees some potential in training up semi-skilled workers who are now doing the "rough end" of the skilled trades. "I think there is potential in that area," he said, with workers brought up to grade after a two-year training programme. He suggested however that there could be problems related to union recognition.

The net result of the shortages is rising costs, Mr Webb said. "Prices go up for a start. Things slow down, although nobody is saying that projects aren't starting." There is also a lot of overtime about, yet this too might become a problem because of EU limits on the working week, he said.

Mr Webb believes that the industry will benefit from growth that can be maintained, unlike the past when things were more like a ride on a roller-coaster. "I believe we have reached a sustainable level of growth. I don't think we are going to double again over the next four years."

Mr McCabe also sees this new stability coming into the industry, supported by the burgeoning national building stock. This will produce much maintenance work that will provide follow-on employment for contractors. "We suffered the opposite way in the 1980s and I think we can tolerate this," he said.

He likens the labour market to a British Premier League soccer match. Irish workers have for years had to travel abroad to find work in construction. "We have played the away match and it is now time to play the home match."