Ms Gráinne O'Toole:

I thank the Chairman for inviting us here. I will speak briefly on the MRCI, setting up the context for our submission, and I will introduce my colleagues, who will speak on certain points that concern us.
MRCI is a national organisation and we have been in existence for more than 12 years. We provide a drop-in service to migrant workers and assist them in achieving their rights in the areas of employment, immigration and anti-discrimination. Our submission is based on the evidence of people with whom we work and research we have conducted over the years. We have been actively working on the work permit system for several years and we work closely with departmental officials on an ongoing basis to try to make the system better, more efficient and fairer.
We are concerned with the rights of the most vulnerable migrant workers in the State. We work with undocumented migrants, people who have suffered forced labour, au pairs, carers, restaurant workers and domestic workers, and our comments are confined to those groups. Nearly 59,000 people are eligible to apply for work permits in the State, a significant number. Migration plays a very important role in economic development and it will continue to play that role, given the global nature of our economy. We constantly examine population growth and EU trends, and the current level of immigration in Europe is insufficient to maintain the working age within OECD countries. We need to look ahead and the Employment Permits (Amendment) Bill provides an opportunity to make our system more fit for purpose.
The Department has always focused on the stated policy commitment of attracting high skills into Ireland. We also need to consider essential skills and we are keen to work with the Department and SOLAS on that because we see demands in the economy that are not officially recorded. We have been in touch with a number of the members about the issue of au pairs, who are de factoworkers. The notion of au pairs no longer exists in real terms but provides a loophole for people to employ workers at lower employment standards than we would uphold through our employment legislation. We also see a growth in the need for care workers across the EU and we must tackle it here. We will need more workers in the future and we want a system that can accommodate this.
We want the conditions for exploitation in the work permit system wiped out and loopholes closed off. Our submission speaks to those issues. My colleague, Mr. Chowdhury, will talk about the right to change employer and the undocumented worker scheme, or what will be known in the Bill as the reactivation scheme.