Ms Edel McGinley:

It is great to hear the support for a move to full access after two years. It might eliminate some of the issues that MII is also raising.

With regard to a points-based system, the position is more complicated than outlined. Our system is a guest or temporary system so it assumes that people are not going to migrate here permanently. A points-based system is about permanent migration. Therefore, we need a discussion on what we actually believe migration to be in Ireland. Is it temporary or permanent? Under the points-based system in Canada, for example, there is permanent residency and points are applied to different sets of skills. That is not the system we have. It is one we could explore but it means a massive, almost ideological, shift in the way we consider migration in Ireland, from a temporary route to a permanent one. We would be in favour of that but it is not something the Department has ever considered. We had a comprehensive review of labour migration two years ago. A new system was never part of that discussion so we are still in a mode that is forever temporary. We want to see a shift towards more permanent migration mechanisms. The critical skills permit assumes people are coming permanently. The general skills permit is temporary.