Departmental Funding
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
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James Lawless (FF), Kildare North

There is a real skills shortage. It is a factor of success because we are at almost full employment in the economy. Recently my Department produced a labour force modelling report which looked at our construction skills needs. I am working closely with Minister of State, Deputy Harkin, on the development of that report. That showed we need to continue to grow our pool of skilled tradespeople from our craft trades right across the board - all the skills we need to build the big infrastructure projects we aspire to develop over the course of this term which are funded through the national development plan. For almost the first time we actually have funding. What we need is an intermesh between the labour force and the skills to deliver. There are a number of ways we can do that but primarily it is through skilling and training our people. Things like modern methods of construction can be embraced which, as well as being more productive, also bring the employment opportunities to a more regional level because there can be factories developing modern methods of construction in a regional, rural location which are then shipped off to a building site in the big town or the big city without the worker having to commute every day. It addresses the gender balance in the workforce and things like that as well because it permits women with caring responsibilities and people with disabilities to work on a site like that because they may not be able to travel to a traditional construction site. It is beneficial for many reasons and is something we will continue to progress.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29