Ms Fiona Ward:

The economic migration interdepartmental group is a cross-Government group. The Departments of Education, Justice and Social Protection are represented on it, as well as the various policy Departments, including the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Department with responsibility for tourism. In reviewing the occupation list, we apply a whole-of-government approach to ensuring the employment permit regime is focused on meeting the skills and labour challenges in the economy. Government policy, in the first instance, is that we would seek to fill vacancies from within the Irish labour market and across the European Union. The Department of Education is a very active member of the economic migration group. In our consideration, we examine what skills and training are required and the college outputs for the various occupations. It is an evidenced-based process. Ireland is a leader across the European Union in linking labour market intelligence to our economic migration policy.