A Dublin construction worker who lost his job in the recession has won a major international tapas competition with his own compact adaptation of the Irish breakfast.

Neil Tanner's winning dish was a tapas version of the full Irish breakfast consisting of sausage casing filled with layers of black pudding, chorizo sausage, Irish dry cured bacon, and mushrooms with a small poached quail's egg in the middle.

Tanner, from North Wall, said he was thrilled to have won the competition after being "on the verge of giving up" on finding a new job after the construction industry was hit by the economic downturn.

"I was working in construction up until a year and a half ago when everything hit rock bottom for the industry. I started to think of alternative careers and I had worked in kitchens in my teens and enjoyed that. I never knew it would lead to winning a competition like this and I am delighted."

Tanner applied to dozens of different colleges and courses before landing a place on the 16-week culinary course with Fáilte Ireland.

"I had been sitting around wondering what to do and decided to go and get onto a course in cooking somewhere, which was even more difficult than I could have ever expected. Thousands of people were applying and it was extremely difficult to find a place on any of them.

"I applied for the Fáilte Ireland course and they told me that they were receiving hundreds of applications for the course whereas before the recession really hit they actually had to go out and hand out leaflets to get people to join. It is madness out there now."

Tanner, who now works as a chef at the Westbury Hotel in Dublin, was accepted onto the 20-person course and entered the International Tapas Competition in Vallodolid, Spain with his new signature dish.

"The organisers told me that the dish I made had to be Irish. I had a few ideas, seafood tapas and things like that, but they could have been from any part of the world. And then the idea about the Irish breakfast struck me as it is internationally recognised and the dish won."

As victor, Neil has received an all-expenses trip to New York's five-star Wyndham Hotel where he will showcase his winning dish at the New York annual tapas festival next year.

His mentor in Fáilte Ireland, Martin Potts said: "To come home as the winner is a wonderful reflection of the passion and interest Irish people have in food."

Last year, Irish man William Maher was a runner up in the competition, having entered after losing his job as a painter/decorator.