A total of 70,000 construction workers are facing the threat of redundancy amid the worsening economic conditions, the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) claimed today.
With Budget 2009 due next Tuesday, industry chiefs warned that the Government must take steps to protect vulnerable building firms and their staff, or job losses will worsen.
The influential CIF urged ministers to support the fragile sector with a similar bail-out and protection scheme as banks have been given. Deposits in Irish and five foreign-owned finance houses have been secured in an unprecedented €400 billion Government guarantee.
Hank Fogarty, CIF president and director at SIAC Construction, called for the same quick action for builders.
“The Government acted decisively last week in moving to stabilise the Irish banking system,” he said. “The same decisiveness is now needed to stabilise the real economy. I don’t accept for one minute that these job losses have to be inevitable.
"However, in the absence of measures to stabilise the residential and commercial property markets and a strong public investment programme, the Irish economy is facing a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Figures released yesterday by the Central Statistics Office revealed that almost a fifth of construction workers have lost their jobs in the last year.
CIF forecast the crisis will deepen unless action is taken. It said the residential building trade is facing 50,000 job losses while the commercial area is likely to see 20,000 redundancies.
Mr Fogarty also rejected the widely held view that house prices have further to fall.
He said: “If the property markets are allowed to fall even further below their long-run equilibrium level, the worst fears about the economy’s and the banking system’s exposure to property will be realised.”
He added: “By maintaining planned investment in National Development Plan projects and addressing serious deficits in the areas of education and healthcare, the Budget can act in a counter cyclical way to support confidence and investment in the economy”.
PA