Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I move amendment No. 9:

In page 25, between lines 18 and 19, to insert the following:

“(a) allow the application to remain active and notify the applicant of the matters that are incomplete, and that the applicant has 30 days to submit the material necessary to rectify the incomplete aspects of the employment permit application;”.

My amendment relates to allowing a work permit application to remain active while a mistake is rectified. The process can be convoluted and cumbersome, and necessarily so. Workers and employers understand that the system must be robust and requires a certain amount of paperwork and oversight. My amendment facilitates some flexibility where a genuine mistake or an oversight has occurred to allow the application to remain active and gives the applicant 30 days to submit the material necessary to rectify any incomplete aspects of the employment permit application.

If the Minister of State is not minded to accept the amendment, I am happy to work with him. It is a case of snakes and ladders but maybe people should not always have to go back to the start and start over. My view is that something could be done, and applications would not have to be suspended completely but would remain active in cases where there has been a genuine mistake.