Around half of professional services firms in the Northern Ireland construction sector made redundancies in the last two years, according to a new report.

The report details the effect of the downturn on workers in the building industry, including quantity surveyors, architects, civil engineers, the BBC reports.

The new research, conducted by the Construction Industry Council, covers redundancies over a two-year period up to November 2009 and is due to be presented to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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"The research conducted and evidence compiled for this report has been crucial in order for the industry to understand the problems currently hampering economic growth and to plan for a successful and sustainable future," said Dr Linda Martin, of the Construction Industry Council.

"The construction industry is expected to remain in recession this year, albeit with a much shorter fall in activity than was witnessed in 2009, before returning to modest growth in 2011.

"The recovery process will be slow and 2012 employment is projected to still be nearly 11% below the 2008 peak," she added.

(NS/BMcC)