"Unquestionably, I think the total numbers will fall back, " he told the Sunday Tribune. "But they won't fall back to anything like the commentators are saying. We would estimate 15,000 to 20,000 job losses."

Fogarty's comments followed a forecast Davy Stockbrokers made two weeks ago that had house completions falling from nearly 90,000 in 2006 to 65,000 by 2008, putting 35,000 jobs at risk.

Davy's outlook was slightly more pessimistic than Ulster Bank's, whose chief economist, Pat McArdle, predicted 30,000 jobs could be lost over the next two to three years.

Fogarty said the analysts were overly pessimistic and did not fully understand the dynamics of his industry. "A huge number of house building companies also have civil engineering and commercial building interests and they are not going to let good people go. Everybody is working over capacity at the moment and a lot of people will be slotted in elsewhere, " he said.

He predicted the average number of hours worked by people in the industry would decline as the norm shifts from "extraordinary hours" to merely "long hours". While housing construction was slowing down, Fogarty said other sectors in the industry were still performing strongly, with maintenance a particular growth area. "Ongoing maintenance now generates 4.5bn per annum, which is up from 2.2bn three years ago, " he said.