Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 23 February 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government
General Scheme of the Planning and Development Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed)
Mr. Gavin Lawlor:
I am sorry, Chairman; there is one really important piece here with regard to bringing people from overseas, which is that planning is not a critical skill in terms of visas. We have a number of employees in our practice who come from abroad. We have one person from India and we have had colleagues from Australia, new Zealand and America in the past. They all had to go through quite a significant rigmarole to get a visa. We have architects and engineers but we do not actually have planners on the critical skills list.