James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the officials for presenting. The proposed measures and changes seem very sensible. I have a specific question which I think comes in under the 50:50 rule and labour market needs test. It is a scenario that I encountered when meeting businesses, some of which were considering repatriating or moving significant numbers of staff to Ireland, some in a Brexit scenario and some that would have been looking at Ireland as a destination anyway. One employer approached me to say it had a number of staff working in the UK, with a possibility post Brexit that it might bring them to Ireland. It was a technology business and many staff were non-EEA and non-EU nationals. The company came across an issue with the 50:50 rule where, if it tried to bring in all of those people in one go, it would fall foul of that rule and not be able to bring them in.

It said to me that this is an opportunity for Ireland to receive foreign direct investment by having a company come in en massefrom another jurisdiction. It would not be able to satisfy the 50:50 requirement immediately upon arrival but perhaps a scenario could be envisaged where it was given five years to ramp up. In other words, if it moved the workforce into Ireland and brought 100 or 120 people into Ireland, many of whom are non-EEA nationals, it might give a commitment that within five years of operation, it would have a number of Irish or EEA employees to match. That seemed to be something reasonable and positive that we should encourage. I know there is a provision for certain start-ups but this is not really a start-up scenario, but one with a company that is new to Ireland but is not a start-up. It is actually an established, successful business. I do not know if that is something that could be considered in the Bill. Perhaps it could be looked at in an amendment or in the early drafting stages. I am interested in opinions on that. It seems like a legitimate scenario and difficulty that should be tackled.