Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are straying away from pre-legislative scrutiny of the permits a little bit. The critical skills employment permit, CSEP, currently has a minimum threshold of €30,000 and the worker must hold a degree qualification. A CSEP could also be granted where remuneration is above €60,000. The €30,000 is going to increase to €32,000 and the €60,000 is going to increase to €64,000. For those who will come in on those particular permits, the terms and conditions will be fixed. That is all part of it. We are straying into questions of why we cannot get people locally to do those jobs and why we need to bring people in on permits. It is quite clear in what the Department is setting out that the remuneration is there in respect of full-time hours.