Local labour shortage threatens recovery

A severe labour shortage is hampering the efforts of many local businesses to make the most of the post-lockdown recovery.

Across all sectors, businesses are struggling to fill vacant positions, though construction and hospitality are two of the worst affected.

Mullingar businessman Bill Collentine is looking to hire a plumber for his firm due to the recent upturn in activity. His efforts were unsuccessful due to the lack of qualified tradesmen, he says.

“There are no tradesmen available. Anyone who wants to work is working. There are no lads doing nothing. All of the tradesman are run off their feet. We put ads in the Examiner and the Topic and the only responses we got were from young lads looking to start apprenticeships, which is a good sign that they are starting to come back.”

Mr Collentine, who is also a member of Westmeath County Council, says that there are labour shortages in all trades. After boosting their savings during the pandemic, many local households are looking at making improvements and people involved in building are finding it hard to recruit staff to meet the growing demand, he says.

“All trades are finding it hard [to get people], painters, electricians, tilers, plumbers. There is a lot of work out there. It seem that people have a bit of money after Covid. There are lots of repairs and maintenance jobs and people putting in bathrooms or getting extensions.”

Hospitality is another sector where the labour shortage is causing problems.

North Westmeath entrepreneur Bernie Comaskey recently purchased the Blue Hackle pub in Delvin, now renamed as Brinsley’s Bar, after one of the village’s most well known sons. Mr Comaskey, who has extensive experience in pub and hospitality, says that he has never had as much difficulty trying to recruit staff.

In a bid to find an experienced manager to run the business, he put together an attractive package that included accommodation above the business, if needed. However, despite a rigorous recruitment drive, he struggled to find someone due to the lack of interest. After three months, he hired a local young person as a trainee manager.

Describing the current labour shortage as “unbelievable”, Mr Comaskey says the builders he hired to carry out the renovation work on the bar have told him of their struggles hiring labourers.

Mullingar publican Liam Gilleran, president of the Westmeath branch of the Vintners Federation of Ireland, says most local pubs are experiencing staff shortages, made worse since students returned to college last month.

He says that many local pubs, including his own, lost experienced people while the sector was closed.

“Really good staff left because of job insecurity. People went to the likes of Mergon or construction or even IT. Really good people walked away, people who you would have let run your business for you.”

At a pre-budget webinar with Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe, the presidents of Mullingar and Athlone chambers said the recruiting staff was a major problem for many local businesses.

Speaking during the event, sponsored by The Ardonagh Group, which is opening a global data and risk management centre in Mullingar, the president of Athlone Chamber, Alan Shaw, said that the availability of labour is “the single biggest issue” facing many local businesses as they adjust to the full reopening of society.

He said that was recently speaking to a local childcare provider who said that the current difficulty in hiring new staff is similar to what they experienced at the height of the boom.

He said that businesses are concerned that a labour shortage will lead to a “spiralling” of wage costs, which will have a knock-on effect on inflation and put upward pressure on consumer prices.

Many companies are now having to look outside Ireland to hire staff but there are “big issues” with the pace at which work permits are being processed by the state, he said.

The president of Mullingar Chamber John Geoghegan echoed his Athlone counterpart’s sentiments, saying that there are major labour shortages in the construction sector, in particular.

He said that for the first time since the Celtic Tiger years, he was hearing of “lads coming over from Moldova over the course of a weekend to work on a building site in Navan”.