Five thousand people attending a working abroad exposition in Dublin yesterday were greeted by Rob Knight, employment minister of Australia’s Northern Territory, the Irish Timesreports.

It is expected that the Northern Territory will need in excess of 20,000 new foreign workers to fill positions in more than 130 different professions over the next five years, and gave what the Irish Timescalled the “hardest sell” at the event.

A number of professionals at the event displayed concern with the situation in the Republic, with the Irish Times speaking to a metal fabrication specialist wanting to move abroad to “anywhere that is not here” and a logistics engineer who said his profession in the country had been “wiped”.