Economist reveals number of construction workers needed for housing is less with more efficiency

Up to 80,000 extra construction workers could be needed in Ireland to address infrastructural deficits mainly to build new housing and to retrofit existing homes.

According to the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council the country has significant infrastructural deficits in four key areas, health, transport, housing and electricity with housing and planning the big challenges.

Niall Conroy, Senior Economist with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council explained: "It's not altogether surprising that Ireland has some structural deficits so we're comparing Ireland to other high income European countries but Ireland hasn't always been a high income country so inevitably it has some catch up to do."

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Speaking on Morning Ireland on the construction of housing and productivity in the construction industry, Conroy said "there is a particular issue there in that after the last financial crisis house building essentially stopped, construction halted completely, lots of firms went bust, lots of workers emigrated.

"A lot of the capacity was lost in the system so it's a case of trying to build that back up because we have an increase in population and we have lots of pent up demand for housing in Ireland."

Housing was outlined as one of the most labour intensive, the hardest to address quickly as Conroy admitted that 60,000 fewer workers would be needed if more modern methods of construction were being used as seen in other countries.

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Conroy outlines modular housing as an example of boosting efficiency saying: "We aren't using the more modern methods of construction that would be seen in other countries things like building modular housing which are largely built in a factory off site and then finished on site.

"This is partly a legacy of the financial crisis so a lot of construction firms after the crisis didn't want to invest in new technology after the financial crisis where they saw the kind of boom bust cycle that they have."

It was revealed that if Ireland could increase productivity and efficiency with the aid of more modern construction methods, only 20,000 construction workers would be needed to meet the housing demand.