The Construction Industry Federation (CIF) last night accused the Higher Education Authority (HEA) of "scaremongering" by claiming that up to 80,000 male construction workers could face long-term unemployment should the construction sector go into serious decline.
However, the trade union Siptu said the HEA warning was an "urgent reminder" of the need for a strategic shift in our training and educational programmes.
In a strongly worded criticism of comments made by HEA chief executive Tom Boland, the CIF's newly appointed director general and former Government minister, Tom Parlon, branded the HEA a "quango".
"I absolutely object to that figure; there's no way we're going to lose 80,000 jobs", he told The Irish Times last night. "It is scaremongering, it is ill advised . . . the worst case scenario I've seen is 20,000 jobs."
He added that he felt Mr Boland was "talking down his nose at the construction industry and the people working in it", and suggested that many of these people never had the opportunity to go to university due to the points system.
As a result, he said it would be "more in Mr Boland's line" to focus on making sure the HEA made third level more accessible.
However, Siptu president Jack O'Connor said Mr Boland's comments were "worrying" and called for urgent action on education and retraining to prevent the return of large-scale long-term unemployment.
"On the positive side the downturn in house building creates new capacity for a dramatic increase in public capital infrastructure programmes," he said. "But a more fundamental issue remains the need for long-term sustainable growth based on a highly skilled workforce, and here the Government needs to show far more creative thinking and a willingness to look at radical initiatives than it has done in the past."
In a press statement released yesterday, Mr Boland noted that over 82,000 of the 183,000 people who classified themselves as working in the construction or building occupational group during the 2006 census - the vast majority of whom are male - did not have any more than lower secondary level education.
"The prospect of immediate earning power in construction has lured many thousands of young men away from continuing with their education," he said. "With that temptation reduced, the HEA hopes that many will opt to continue in education, to their long-term benefit and that of Ireland as a whole."
The Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin, said he was confident several major infrastructure projects would help to ease any problems.
"There will be continued pick up in the National Development Plan and on the infrastructural side. That won't absorb it all. But we would urge all young people to complete their second-level education," he said. - (Additional reporting: PA)