Mr. Neil McDonnell:

One of the biggest differences between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland has probably been the difference in the labour market. We are now at the lowest rate of unemployment ever. Our rate stands at 3.8%, which is the lowest since 2001 when it was 3.9%. We still have a significant degree of long-term unemployment or what they call in the EU not in education, employment or training. The labour shortage is actually a European phenomenon to be absolutely fair.

Within the UK, it is slightly different because there has been a border closure issue about which some of the large employers that are pro-Brexit now have some buyer's remorse. In the Republic, it is slightly different because we did open our borders to the accession states when they came into the EU. One of the outflows of EU membership is, for example, that the economies of Poland and the Baltic states are doing very well. They were traditionally a really significant source of labour in the Republic. The census down here we were talking about earlier shows a net outflow of Polish people certainly. I cannot recall the exact figure but I think it is a 24% outflow of Poles from the Republic and something similar in terms of Estonians and Lithuanians. They have been significant contributors to our construction, distribution and warehousing functions. We would have members who are asking a lot for visa waivers and employment permits beyond the EU but the EU's and Ireland's first position is that we recruit in the local market first and the EU market second. Then and only then can we go to the rest of the world.

That point was reiterated yesterday by the Minister, Deputy Coveney, at the enterprise forum. However, we are experiencing difficulties in getting even people from south-eastern countries such as those in the Balkans and Czechia, Slovenia and Slovakia. Therefore, we have real constraints. However, another interesting outflow of all of this, and this is a pandemic issue, is that many businesses are bringing in back-office staff who are not based in Ireland at all. We have businesses that have an engineering function in Portugal, a payroll function in Bulgaria or a purchasing or engineering function in the Czech Republic. The pandemic has brought in flexibilities that were not available before from a labour market perspective. We did see the labour market really substantively change during the pandemic and we are still getting our heads around the impacts of that.