Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

Last week, this House supplicated itself before the US Congress seeking the regularisation of the position of the undocumented Irish, and the House spoke with one voice on that issue. It is unfortunate that this Bill is the nearest we get to legislation that reflects the position of people entering this country under circumstances that need to be regularised because it appears to be far from what we would want for our own citizens in countries and economies like the United States. Calling the residency permit allowed for in this Bill, which is nothing like the US green card system, a green card is playing loose and fast with language and creating unrealistic expectations about this Government's immigration policy, never mind its employment policy.

Forfás has submitted a report to the expert group on future skills needs and the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The report is interesting in that it states something many of us have long believed but which needs to be put on the record and properly understood. Migration in terms of labour is good for the economy. Not only does it increase gross domestic product but it increases it to the extent that it is more or less neutral in terms of GDP per capita. The level of wealth we have with our current population is maintained with those who come here to provide their employment skills and increase our economic needs.

More importantly, migration in terms of labour is needed from the point of view of our dependency ratio. I refer to those who are in labour and those who depend on the fruits of that labour, including pensioners, young people and social services. Currently, we have a good dependency ratio in terms of other European countries but as we grow older as a country our indigenous population will not be able to sustain those standards and those employed in the Irish economic workforce will become less of a factor. It is unfortunate that we have not addressed those aims in this debate.

It is particularly unfortunate that when we had an opportunity for debate on immigration issues the Government was not more firm in tackling misconceptions on the part of the wider public. The tawdry affair that was the constitutional referendum on citizenship failed to get across the point that most foreign nationals are here for legitimate reasons. Most of them are here because they are part of the existing work permits system and this Bill is a poor way of thanking those who have come here and helped in the economic benefit this country has received over the past ten years because many of the problems that continue to exist in terms of bonded labour that migrant workers find themselves in will be perpetuated by this Bill. Their work permit, to all intents and purposes, is owned by their employer and their freedom to move from one employment to the other is restricted.

The social problems that many of these workers continue to experience in terms of family reunification remain unaddressed in this Bill. Unless the Government is willing, which I suspect it is not, to address these issues on Committee Stage, we are merely putting poor legislation on the Statute Book.

I want to record other aspects of the Forfás report, particularly the overview that organisation has carried out of skills shortages in our economy by occupation. The report claims there are shortages in construction, including architects, civil engineers, planners and quantity surveyors. In the financial area there appears to be a current shortage of accountants and tax experts. I find that surprising but that is what the report states. In engineering the system is not providing enough people in terms of design and production engineers and there is a shortage of technicians. In information technology, there is a shortage of computer analysts and programmers. In pharmaceuticals, there is a shortage of chemical engineers. In the health care area and across a range of areas we appear to have shortages, including in transport, sales and catering. Across a panoply of our economy we are likely to experience skills shortages in the coming years and unless we have a migration and an employment policy that is more proactive than the Government is prepared to put forward, we are lining ourselves up for serious economic difficulties in the future, because the Government continues to ignore the social consequences of failing to have an integrated policy in this area.

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