Two in five apprentices, most of whom would be in their late teens, admitted to feeling drunk at work while over 80% said they were hungover from the previous night's binge drinking, according to a survey conducted by NUI Galway for the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Just under 5% of the apprentices said they had an accident at work due to drink and 3.6% due to taking drugs.

The authors of the research - Victoria Hogan, Roseanne Cannon and Saoirse Nic Gabhainn - said that if those figures were applied to the 15,600 apprentices working on buildings, it would result in 625 alcohol or drug-related accidents on building sites. This has "huge health and safety implications for the industry, " they said.

In a finding which will be of extreme concern to the industry, over half of apprentices admitted that they had "performed poorly" due to taking drink and drugs.

Almost half of them said that they missed days at work as a result of over-indulgence, while almost twothirds arrived late for work or left early for the same reason.

More than nine in 10 of the apprentices said they had taken alcohol in the previous month, while 16% said they had drunk five or six times a week, consuming more than six drinks on each of these occasions.

Cannabis was by far the most popular drug of use, with 40% admitting they used it, followed by ecstasy (23%), amphetamines (17%) and magic mushrooms (13%).

"The level of alcohol and illicit drug consumption reported in the present study is much higher than national figures for regular binge drinking and for cannabis and ecstasy use, and confirms previous research that the sector carries a particular risk of substance abuse" said the authors.