Ms Fiona Ward:

The labour market needs test is one of the main reasons people fail in their employment permit applications. It is underpinned by the primary legislation and the methods it requires are quite outdated in terms of requiring an employer to advertise a vacancy in a national newspaper for three days. They have to advertise it in a local newspaper or on a local website and on the Department of Social Protection's jobsireland.iewebsite across the European Union. These days, most employers do not advertise in that way to fill job vacancies. There are many different ways to advertise, for example, through social media, LinkedIn and sector specific journals. Also, not to have one size fits all in terms of recruitment, the proposal to move it to legislation was to give that flexibility and maintain the absolute requirement to test the domestic labour market and the EEA labour market, while giving flexibility to employers to advertise in a method that is more suited to their particular occupation and sector.