A band of brothers who fly hundreds of miles to join building boom

25 May 2016

AN army of over 1,000 construction workers leaves their families every Monday to catch flights and ferries from Belfast for a working week outside Northern Ireland.

Gathering en masse in departure lounges, these tradesmen are manning the booming building sites of Scotland and England.

In return for job security and better pay following the worst recession in living memory, bricklayers, plumbers, electricians and joiners are routinely leaving their homes before dawn for a five to six hour commute.

With the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and Tughans Construction Market Survey recently confirming that 42 per cent of companies’ workloads are currently outside Northern Ireland, local businesses are almost exclusively exporting their own

workers to these jobs.

Dubbed FIFOs in Australia (Fly In Fly Outs), and recently labelled “semigrants” in the Republic of Ireland, where the Dublin to London route has been confirmed as the world’s second busiest international airline route, tradesmen have now joined, in nsignificant numbers, the more seasoned white collar workers for a 400-mile commute.

In a new four-part series for the Down Recorder, Ciara Colhoun will explore the legacy of this emerging trend, both on the local economy and on the families left behind.

• This week there is the story of Michael Galloway, of MG Construction in Saul, who sends 30 workers to Scotland every week to work on one-off luxury builds.

• Next week Cathal McMullan, of Alternative Heat and Kane Heating in Castlewellan, will speak about the logistics of transporting and accommodating almost 100 local workers in Scotland and England every week.

Kane Heating plumber Brian Owens, who was one of dozens of young tradesmen who emigrated to Australia from Leitrim and Castlewellan when the recession was at its worst, will explain why so many of his fellow emigrants are returning home to join the big commute.

• The following week Downpatrick company director Philip Polly, of Cosy Roof, will speak of his success using local tradesmen across the water and there will be the story of the award-winning Crossgar company, Lignum Interiors, whose highly skilled cabinetmakers have travelled to

Canada, Russia and America, recently requiring ransom insurance for a job in Iraq.

• To finish the series we will hear from other super commuters including Saul businessman Barry Curran, who has launched his own training company 400 miles from home, architect Gail Patterson, who will speak of her experience as a commuter in the male-dominated construction world, and Strangford granny, Anne Campbell, will tell the unusual story of commuting to London to babysit.

The scale of movement of commuting tradesmen every Monday and Friday has not gone unnoticed by Mr Graham Keddie, managing director of Belfast International Airport.

Estimating that around 1,000 workers from all over Northern Ireland catch Monday’s red eye flights out of his airport alone, he said large scale projects in London were fuelling the demand for the “army of mobile tradespeople”, while low cost airlines were revolutionising work patterns.

He said the “super commuter” was now an established part of airport business.

“If the work is in London, Manchester or Scotland, they know that they can work the week away, building the infrastructure or delivering the new skyline of high-rise office developments in the south-east, and that come the weekend, they’ll be back home,” he said.

“The construction sector may be

in the doldrums in Northern Ireland, but it’s far from that in the capital where numerous large-scale projects are fuelling demand.

“We have 10 flights to London – Gatwick, Stansted and London Luton – and they take the lion’s share of about 800 workers back to work after spending the weekend at home with their families.

“It’s now the established Monday routine, while at the back end of the week we see an influx of workers in arrivals.

“It’s possible to work hundreds of miles away, but you’re comfortable in the knowledge that come the weekend, you can head back to your loved ones. For as long as a recovery remains patchy or flat-lines in Northern Ireland, I see this as the new ‘normal’ for hundreds of workers continuing.”

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