Export trade in builders is reversed

Booming Ireland is being flooded with foreign visitors... in the form of English navvies.

After centuries of Irish labourers coming to England to work, builders from Britain are now flocking over the Irish Sea to get a job.

New buildings are going up all over Dublin, but there isn't enough home-grown muscle to do the job.

Carpenter Sean Walsh, 43, from Birmingham, who is working on a new library block for Trinity College, says: "Dublin is one big building site. We don't even have to put up with jokes at our expense - except from the gaffer."

Foreman Tony Greene says: "I'm the only home-grown Irishman on the site."

Kevin Gilna, of the Irish Construction Industry Federation, says: "It's ironic how the tables have turned. We needed 8,000 foreign workers last year. We'll need 7,000 more this year and thousands more for the next four years. We've been recruiting all over the world.

"We first try to contact Irish workers who left here in the early 1990s and tempt them back.

"Next, we try to target people with Irish ancestry from Europe and beyond. We have had jobs fairs in Canada, America, Australia and South Africa."

Irish foreman Pat O'Brien, 48, who is currently working on a block of flats, told The Sun: "I've had hundreds of English lads working for me.

"Block-layers get 160 punts, equivalent to £130 a day and, even with the exchange rate, they won't do much better than that back in the UK."