The price of housing is the main financial obstacle to Irish emigrants returning to the State to work, the outgoing director general of the State training agency FAS, Dr John Lynch, said yesterday.

Stating that a "downward adjustment" in house prices was required if companies were to become competitive in the market for international labour, Dr Lynch said returning emigrants no longer appeared to be discouraged by salary and tax levels in the State.

His remarks at the annual conference of the Institute of Personnel and Development in Ireland were similar to those of the institute's chairman, Mr Peter Mulholland, who said people who were not yet property-owners were struggling to afford accommodation.

"Normal salary levels simply do not provide sufficient means to people to purchase or rent reasonable accommodation," said Mr Mulholland, who is AIB's head of human resource specialists.

Dr Lynch, who is stepping down from his position at FAS to take up a full-time role as chairman of CIE, said the pool of high-trained Irish people working abroad must be "the first port of call" for the Government's immigration policy.

But he questioned whether its target of seeking to attract 150,000 Irish people working abroad among the 300,000 immigrants needed in the next seven years was a "tad ambitious".

"If the Government's target of 15,000 Irish-born immigrants [each year] was to be achieved, almost two-thirds of the key 2535 year-old group of emigrants would have to return," he said. This would be difficult given rising property prices.

Dr Lynch said he had "no doubt" that the present unemployment rate of about 5.2 per cent would fall to 4 per cent by this time next year.

This meant that a sellers' market for labour would evolve in the "foreseeable future". "This will require a systematic shift by human resources practitioners in designing pay and non-pay packages, which will attract and hold not just key personnel, but the vast majority of the workforce."

The declining birth rate meant that fewer young people would be joining the workforce in the period of the current National Development Plan which ended in 2006, he said. "It will have a particularly sharp impact on a strongly growing sector such as construction, which has historically recruited entrants almost exclusively from young males."

This would be offset by increased immigration and greater participation rates by women and in retraining older workers, but Dr Lynch warned that companies would have to develop new human-resources strategies.

Staff turnover among immigrants would be a "multiple" of the current rate in the call-centre industry if tailored human resources strategies were not introduced. Language training, financial assistance with rented accommodation and a social integration programme would be needed, he said.

While there was still scope for recruiting more women into the labour force, Dr Lynch said the main barrier to female participation in the labour force was "not marriage, but the presence of children".

"It continues to amaze me that firms of industrial estates, who need female employees, fail to investigate how they might jointly set up creches for infants or school runs for school-going children.

"It seems to me that any employee would willingly pay most of the cost of such a facility and in return for the remaining subvention, the employer would enjoy a female turnover rate close to zero."

While training current workers was crucial, the performance of Irish companies had been "extremely poor". This would have to be improved if the "leadingedge" position enjoyed by Irish companies were to be retained, warned Dr Lynch.