Ms Fiona Ward:

The employment permit system is a vacancy-led system. Before there is an employment permit there is a job and a written contract of employment. It is expected that an employee will remain with an employer for approximately one year before the employee can move to another occupation. The reason for that is to strike a balance between, on the one hand, the employer's expectations that the foreign national will stay for a reasonable period of time, given that the employer has a job vacancy, has incurred costs in recruiting that person and, generally, has paid for the employment permit, which costs about €1,000 per permit, and, on the other hand, not unduly tying the employee to that employer. At the end of the 12-month period, in the normal course of events the employee can move to another employer and apply for another employment permit. During the 12-month period an employee can move to another employment permit if the job's terms and conditions are not what the employee expected when he or she came here, for example, if the employee was made redundant. In addition, if the terms and conditions are not as outlined in the written contract of employment, the employee can move within that 12-month period. We were trying to balance the needs of the employer without unduly tying the employee to the employment permit and to the employment.

We looked at other jurisdictions to see if any of them had a sectoral type of arrangement. We have not identified a jurisdiction that has a regime on that basis. In all the jurisdictions we looked at within and outside Europe the employer-employee link is part of the employment permit systems across the globe. Germany allows somebody to come to the country and look for a job but it is confined to the very higher end of the labour market. It is somewhat similar to the occupations on our critical skills list. Again, Australia has it for very tightly limited exceptions and it is linked to areas and locations in Australia which are not densely populated. It is not something that would be replicated in Ireland. We have not been able to identify any jurisdiction that operates on that basis.