He'll never work in an office. He smiles broadly at the idea of always being able to work out of doors. "It's the best job in the world. In the summer it's excellent. If it wasn't for the bad weather I'd love it all year round. I'm never stuck in any one place. After two or three months at the most in one place you're on to a completly different place."
Having met a master bricklayer while he was still at school, George Kelly decided this was what he wanted to do. He left after the Inter Cert at St David's CBS Secondary School in Artane, Dublin, and started work on a building site. He will shortly finish a fouryear apprenticeship at DIT Bolton Street. On completion of his exams at Christmas he will be awarded a national craft certificate in bricklaying.
"You never finish learning, even the details, it's very precise. Just to break into it and get the basic things, like working with the trowel, is technical. There are skilful things about it . . . if you get satisfaction out of working with your hands and making something, and saying, well I'm proud of that, then you'll enjoy bricklaying."
Before he started his apprenticeship, Kelly had already worked as a bricklayer and learned on the job. "A man in his forties who worked beside me, he'd make a show of you, he's just tapping along at his own pace and he'll still do more than you."
For Kelly, anyone who takes his job seriously should learn the theory behind bricklaying and study the rules and regulations. There are a number of families in Dublin who are regarded as master bricklayers, where the tradition goes back through generations, he explains.
At this stage, after four years at DIT Bolton Street on the apprenticeship course, having been recruited through FAS, he is studying "mainly theory," including craft science, craft calculations and technical drawing. "You have to be able to draw something to be able to understand it. Stonework, wall tiling, floor tiling . . . it's essential to be good at maths. I did mechanical drawing at school and I enjoyed engineering and woodwork too."
The apprentices study "all the theory behind bricklaying, how to set things out, how to do arches, ramps, curved brick-work, splayed brick work and general decorative brick work and how to work with glass blocks.
"Back in the Sixties they tried to build houses without bricklayers, using prefabricated walls," he explains. "They were useless. Bricklaying is not about having muscles and throwing the blocks up." Without the national craft certificate, Kelly adds, "you could never travel, you could never have a union card, you could never apply for a visa . . . you can't emphasise it enough. It's not about physical power.
"You have to progress. It's like all the foremen we have on the building sites, they were all plumbers, bricklayers or plasterers, they went off and did the building technology course. The people we work for now, the builders, all started out as plasterers.
"I'd love to be a builder if I ever got the money together. You have to get a bit of money." Next year Kelly hopes to start a construction technology certificate course.
This year he won the National Apprentice Competitions and was awarded the silver medal by the Department of Education. This summer he represented Ireland at the International Vocational Training Competitions, known as "the Youth Skill Olympics" in Switzerland. Some 30 countries from all over the world took part. With 16 trades represented, Ireland came sixth in the overall result. Kelly was awarded a diploma of excellence.
