The same report noted the career options for construction workers were perceived as poor and the image of working in construction was not viewed positively as a career. Yet, there is a high risk that targets for home construction will be missed in the coming years due to a shortage of construction workers.

Simon Harris, minister for further and higher education, has also noted the risk to building plans, climate plans and retrofitting homes which the shortage of tradespeople and manual workers is likely to cause. 

He launched a process in May to unify further and higher education systems, to provide clear and transparent pathways between further and higher education.

Harris’s proposals are laudable but are still at an early stage and are far from the full solution. A far greater ‘revolution’ on how Irish society, families, individuals and policy makers think about the world of work is needed, in order to have any significant effect of making trades and manual work more attractive, to match the needs of the economy and society.

This is a big economic and social issue which runs structurally deep in Ireland. To change what is clearly an unattractiveness of manual work for those entering the workforce, one has to appreciate how this has happened.

A seminal book by the ESRI in 1990, Understanding Contemporary Ireland, noted there was a dramatic growth in what the authors called ‘credentialism’ in Ireland. Since the introduction of free education up to and including second level in 1966, Irish employers, families, parents, and individual have embraced the drive towards going on to third level and getting a third-level qualification.

People clearly understood you had a better chance of getting a job with a third-level qualification, which has been consistently reported in all data for the past 50 years. A recent CSO report (November 2021) shows that for men aged 25-64, the employment rate was 90%, compared to 38% for those with only primary schooling or no education.

However, the same report noted that in Ireland, 58% of 25-34-year old’s now have a third-level qualification compared to an EU average of 41%. In recent years, 94% of students have successfully completed the Leaving Certificate.

Yet, the Action Plan to Expand the Apprenticeship and Traineeship in Ireland 2016-2020, only managed to recruit 25,815, about 5,000 per year, from a target of 31,000 across a total of 40 apprenticeship programmes, including many new areas such as horticulture, engineering and sales.

The current figure of 8,607 apprenticeships still lags behind Government targets of 10,000 per annum by 2025. Remember the figure for CAO applicants this year is 83,803 compared to these 8,607 apprenticeships. There is a huge mismatch here, with apprenticeship figures running at 10% the figure for CAO applicants.

The Leaving Cert has been part of driving this mismatch. Having earned the Leaving Cert points, most students want the security and status of a college degree. 

Psychologist Howard Gardiner, a professor of education at Harvard, has highlighted that there are at least seven different intelligences. We need those who are better at technical and applied trades to specialise in those areas. 

All students perusing the same general education curriculum to Leaving Certification does nothing to encourage students with different intelligences and tends to discourage students from entering a trade. Apprenticeships still have an ‘image problem’ in Ireland. We need to give apprenticeships a qualification equivalent to a degree to help change perceptions. 

Elements of the German model where technical skills are valued and students choose a technical education early in the secondary system need to be introduced and students need to specialise in this type of education, which is accorded equal status.

There are cultural challenges which need to be addressed. Parents need to be encouraged to advise their children on taking up apprenticeships. Irish society has been possessed of a cultural snobbery towards a university education. This will take time to change but public information campaigns need to begin this process.

Policy makers need to become aware that third-level education has become an industry of its own, pursuing its own agenda of increasing numbers of graduates, the famous ‘bums on seats’ argument. 

Irish universities market their courses like any other business, whether these are a close fit for labour market needs or not, and there is no clear system in place to ensure that university offerings match labour market and societal needs.

Gary Becker, the labour economist, as far back as the 1980s, highlighted that thrd level education often only acts as a ‘screen’ or ‘sieve’ to separate those who are perceived as being intelligent (as proven by a degree) from those who are not. 

Unfortunately, there is a strong element of this happening in Ireland. There is a high degree of over-qualification for jobs, where, without a degree, even basic jobs are closed-off to employees who are screened out. Employers are growing the over-qualification problem.

Universities are driving students into masters degrees which do not necessarily make their career aspirations any better, but simply serve the purpose of increasing revenue for universities, who are desperately competing for funding amongst each other. 

This is further driving and educational snobbery, where many parents now believe their graduate offspring need to automatically go on to a masters or even PhD.

But society needs people to do manual work. The undervaluing of important work by way of low wages is another driver towards a completely un-balanced labour market, which has become top-heavy with graduates. Government needs to introduce higher overall minimum wages and re-establish higher sectoral pay rates for those in ‘manual’ occupations.

We need to have a country where working as a care assistant, as a construction operative, a childcare worker, a janitor, a shop assistant, or hairdresser needs to be adequately valued and well-respected and remunerated. Covid, if it has taught us anything, has taught us this. Manual work needs be prioritised in pay negotiations, working conditions and pensions.

We need to remember that higher degrees, the information superhighway and the internet of things will not serve us our coffee or groceries, or take care of our elderly, and it certainly will not build our houses or fix the leaks in our attic. It will only create bottlenecks in the economy, waiting lists for work, inflation of costs and misery for many.

• Dr Tom O’Connor is an economist and sociologist and head of the Department of Applied Social Studies at Munster Technological University (Cork)