Up to 20,000 construction workers began returning to work on residential, early-learning and childcare sites around the country from today as Covid-19 restrictions ease.
But there continues to be frustration within the industry that building work in the remaining parts of the sector that remain stalled cannot yet resume.
Much construction activity has been stopped since January 8. Only work on essential health, social housing, housing adaptation grant, critical transport and utility infrastructure, education, certain foreign direct investment related and nearly completed home projects was allowed to continue.
As a result, last week nearly 53,000 construction workers were in receipt of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment, down from nearly