In the 1980s, Pat McLaughlin, a Donegal builder, had to travel to Dublin to get work. Later in the 1990s, it was to London that McLaughlin went in search of employment as a blocklayer — the only trade he has ever known. With the boom in the Irish construction industry, he returned to Donegal where he employed five men to help him build houses around Letterkenny and the Inishowen peninsula.

Like many other builders, those five men are now unemployed. This year work has been so scarce for McLaughlin, 48, that he has taken to doing small projects in London to keep his family’s finances afloat.

“There isn’t a block to be laid around here in Donegal,” said McLaughlin. “I’ve been building since I was 14 years old and this is worse than it’s ever been.”

McLaughlin, who has two teenage children, said he cannot uproot his family to move to London. In any event, work isn’t too plentiful there either. For now, he is surviving on odd jobs, such as building walls, supplemented with occasional work in London. “I haven’t had a decent job in almost a year and a half,” he said.

The construction sector has borne the brunt of the downturn with an estimated 12,000 workers made redundant since last year. New house completions are expected to fall from 78,000 in 2007 to 45,000 this year, with a further decline to 35,000 homes expected in 2009.

Whereas builders are entitled to get dole payments if made redundant, McLaughlin and other self-employed workers are not eligible for jobseeker’s benefit.The Donegal builder was not counted among the 238,240 people revealed to be on the live register last week. But like many others, McLaughlin found it impossible to get other work.

“I did try to get a job by going to Fas but I’d have been far better sitting in the pub as it was a waste of a day. My wife has had the same trouble. She has applied for work in delicatessens around Inishowen but none was hiring,” said McLaughlin.

Joe McHugh, a local Fine Gael TD, describes Inishowen as the “ground zero” of the crash in the Irish construction industry. With the closure of local factories and big employers such as Fruit of the Loom and Clubman Omega, male workers in the area have relied almost exclusively on the building trade for employment.

Up until last year, a teenager leaving school could expect to earn €650 a week on construction sites. Now, like McLaughlin, those youngsters are facing serious difficulties. Rates for blocklayers in Donegal have fallen from ¤1.20 a block last year to 65c a block now. One 18-year-old known to McLaughlin had his pay cut from ¤100 per day for a five-day week to ¤60 a day for a three-day week. He was let go last month.

Nationally, there are 63,647 more people on the live register than at this time last year — a 36.5% increase and the biggest jump in figures since Central Statistics Office (CSO) records began 40 years ago. Economists are tearing up their projections on a monthly basis as the building sector’s problems spread to other parts of the economy.

Unemployment is now estimated to be at 5.9% of the labour force and most expect it to hit 7% next year. Could it get worse and what are the country’s prospects of pulling out of this economic tailspin?

Signs of Ireland’s impending economic crisis were everywhere last week. The vintners revealed that pubs are closing at the rate of one every day. Annual sales of cars are down almost 19% on last year and Orwell Motors, a well known Dublin dealership, went into liquidation. Another Dublin dealership laid off 38 staff after giving up its BMW franchise. AIB announced it had laid off 600 staff over the first six months of this year, and 200 staff at Sherry FitzGerald, one of the country’s biggest estate agencies, were told their wages will be reduced.

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