CIF tells Government to ‘get serious’

The Government needs to “get serious” about solving the problems facing a construction sector requiring “intensive care”, the industry’s main representative body said yesterday.

Reacting to new CSO estimates — showing a fall of over 5% in building output on a year-on-year basis during the fourth quarter of 2011 — the Construction Industry Federation said that “direct action” is needed and the Government has to intervene if the sector’s problems are to be solved.

The new data also estimates that the value of production fell by just under 10% between the start of October and the end of December, when measured against the same period a year earlier. Although the volume of building work was up by nearly 4% in the final three months of the year, when directly compared to the third quarter.