There is good news for the Kingscourt area this week with the announcement by the O’Reilly Concrete Group that they are currently recruiting to fill 22 positions, including general operatives, drivers and technical staff. Three positions have already been filled and the company hope to fill the other vacancies by January.

The company, which currently employs 122 people across three plants in Kingscourt and Trim and supports an additional 50 subcontractors, exports roughly half of its products to the UK market.

The group sales director, Paddy Hagan, told the Celt that the requirement to take on additional staff has arisen due to the procurement of large contracts in the UK, combined with the Central Park project in Dublin. This is an apartment complex adjacent to the M50. “It will be the biggest apartment block being constructed in Ireland next year” said Mr Hagan.

The range of products on offer from the O’Reilly Concrete Group include pre-cast walls and columns, pre-cast flooring and concrete stairs and paving products.

“We have precast structures for two Aldi stores sitting in the Ballyhoe plant on the Drumconrath to Carrickmacross road at present ñ one of those stores will be constructed in January and the other in mid March. They are sitting there in a factory controlled environment and then brought out to the site. We put up the Aldi store in Carrickmacross in nine days” said Mr Hagan.

They built the new Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda this year in a duration of nine to 10 weeks. “Everything came to site as a complete pre-prepared precast building, including sockets being cast into the walls for the electrics” he explained.

Mr Hagan pointed out that those products are also utilised in the building of schools. He revealed that the Barley Stone paving brick, flags and permeable paving products are currently doing very well in the UK and sales are starting to pick up here too. Their permeable paving is being used a lot in urban areas, as it allows rainfall to soak into the ground, rather than flowing into drains and causing flooding.

In terms of supplying the house building market, the O’Reilly Concrete Group supply readymix concrete, stone and blocks. Paddy Hagan says it is starting to improve as well and even in the local counties there is a little bit of a move on. There are a number of agricultural grants coming into being in January, including a Farm Safety Grant, and a second grant designed to encourage farmers to increase slurry storage. They manufacture cattle slats and pre-stressed wall panels for shed building.

Paddy Hagan says they see a lot of potential in the UK for the use of their products in the building sector.

See more at: http://www.anglocelt.ie/news/roundup/articles/2014/12/09/4034422-twentytwo-new-jobs-for-kingscourt