It is a stark figure: Ireland needs 70,000 additional construction workers by 2030. The houses must be built, the infrastructure delivered and the ageing housing stock retrofitted. The workers, however, are not there.
“It is not a temporary labour shortage,” says Alan Hore, co-founder and director of CitA, the Construction IT Alliance, and a veteran of nearly 40 years in construction education.
“It is a structural issue.”
The biggest shortages are in the craft trades, such as carpentry, electrical, plastering and painting. The numbers opting for these careers are falling as skilled workers emigrate and young people choose university or white-collar technology careers over the tools.
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“The image has not kept pace with the reality of what the industry has become.”
Has the Government recognised the urgency? A Construction Careers and Action Plan was published earlier this year, alongside the Building Heroes initiative and Build Back Home, which placed billboard advertisements in Australia, Canada and the United States, inviting workers who emigrated to return.
These are welcome interventions, but they have limits.
“The decade-long shortfall in intake makes a step change extremely difficult,” says Hore.
Rob Oxley, people director at Sisk, one of Ireland’s largest contractors, knows the pressure first-hand.
“We’ve invested in our training academy to develop the next generation of foremen, site managers and site agents,” he says.
“Retention of this talent is critical. We need to make Ireland and Sisk a great place to work.”
Sisk will have its biggest ever intake this year across its early career programmes, including apprenticeships, trainee and graduate programmes.
The company has strong partnerships with several higher education institutions, including TU Dublin. In 2025, it launched SiskTok, a TikTok account aimed at reaching young people where they actually are.
Hore says that apprenticeships remain fundamental but need to evolve.
“They need to be reimagined. The curricula must keep pace with industry advancements like robotics, automation and digital skills. It is not just about numbers; it is about capability.”
Tier-one companies, he argues, need to be far more visible.
“There should be a national recruitment drive on television, on billboards, on social media, saying simply: we need you. That is not happening at the scale it should be.”
Reskilling and career changers are increasingly part of the conversation. Hore points to practical pathways through the ETBs and Skillnet Ireland, particularly in digital construction and modern methods of construction and sustainability.
“By promoting structured training pathways and flexible learning options, the sector can make it easier for professionals from manufacturing, technology and engineering to transfer their skills into construction,” says Hore.
International recruitment has also played a role. Sisk has previously sourced planners and quantity surveyors from South Africa with high retention rates.
“The key to success is ensuring the onboarding experience is extremely well co-ordinated – a safe landing into the business and a new country,” says Oxley.
Construction careers rank high on Ireland’s Critical Skills Occupation List, but women remain significantly underrepresented – about 9 to 10 per cent of the total workforce nationally. Sisk, however, has pushed its own figure to approximately 20 per cent, more than double the industry average. The company has run focus groups with women across the business and is developing a gender-inclusive strategy for later this year.
For Hore, the problem starts early.
“The barriers are perception, poor understanding among young people and parents and a lack of visible woman role models. Women are needed not just on site but in white-collar roles, including structural engineering, quantity surveying, construction management and architecture. The demand is enormous, at home and abroad.”
On technology, both Hore and Oxley are broadly optimistic. Hore says that lean construction, digital modelling, building information modelling and AI are reshaping what the industry needs, and training providers have largely kept pace. Oxley, meanwhile, describes Sisk’s approach as building blended teams – pairing new digital skills with hard-won experience.
“Many of our engineers and quantity surveyors already have the numerical and reasoning skills needed to understand emerging technological areas such as data analytics,” he says. “We can supplement their existing expertise with these new skills.”
Sisk has also partnered with Microsoft on its AI strategy while encouraging grassroots experimentation among staff.
The premium jobs of the future, Hore argues, will be in the trades, and these are among the roles most resistant to automation. The challenge is making sure enough people know it. “Construction needs a curated, targeted, positive campaign that emphasises its modernisation – that it is digital, industrialised, sustainable and high-skilled,” he says.
“Three-dimensional printing, off-site manufacturing, digital modelling are the realities of modern construction. If Ireland is to deliver on its housing and infrastructure ambitions, it needs to increase its workforce right across the sector.”
Training and reskilling: Some places to start
- CitA Skillnet supports private construction companies – from architects and engineers to main contractors and quantity surveyors – with subsidised ICT and digital skills training. See cita.ie/cita-skillnet
- NZEB and Retrofitting Courses (Solas/ETBs) Short courses in nearly zero energy building and retrofitting for carpenters, electricians, plumbers and plasterers, delivered through ETB Centres of Excellence nationwide. See Solas.ie/programmes/green-skills and ThisIsFET.ie/nzeb
- The National Apprenticeship Office provides information on all construction apprenticeship programmes, from traditional craft trades to newer programmes in scaffolding and engineering. See Apprenticeship.ie
- Numerous postgraduate and conversion courses are available at Ireland’s higher education institutions. Many of these are “stackable”, allowing students to complete modules over a longer period of time, gaining a certificate or a degree, whatever suits them best.
