Ms Clare Dunne:

We took certain chefs off the ineligible occupation list. Their salary cap is still €30,000 because they are the higher end chefs. We pitched the salary at €22,000, which is above the minimum wage. The sectors involved wanted their wages to be lower than that but having looked at it in consultation with the interdepartmental group, we felt that €22,000 was as low as we could possibly go with that particular cohort. We are mindful that we have to look at what is happening in the marketplace. We do not want to preside over a system that is driving wages down. The general employment permit and the critical skills employment permit are next on our list. We are looking to increase their minimum salary thresholds to keep them in line with what they should be pegged against, so to speak, which is the average annual earnings.

In terms of the numbers that have come in, we allowed 360 meat deboners, which is a very skilled occupation, and their salary level was agreed at €27,500. We exhausted that quota recently so 360 out of the 360 have been filled, therefore, we are not issuing any further permits for meat deboners.

For HGV drivers, their salary is €30,000. We issued a quota of 120 permits and 57 of that quota has been taken up to date.

For chefs, the quota was slightly lower than 610. We have issued 170 permits of the allowed quota for chefs to date.