Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)

Since 2004, Irish labour market policy has been to ensure that general labour and skills needs are met from within the workforce of the European Union. For strategic skills or labour shortages in designated occupations in key economic sectors, Government policy is to issue employment permits for the employment of non-EEA nationals for specific vacancies and in response to employer demand. The various schemes that give effect to such policies — green cards, work permits, spousal and dependant work permits and permits for intra-company transferees — were introduced under the Employment Permits Act 2006 and came into effect on 1 February 2007.

The green card scheme replaced the previous work visa or work authorisation scheme and is available for occupations where there are strategically important high-level skills shortages. A green card can be issued for an extensive list of occupations with annual salaries of €60,000 and above, and for a specified list of high skilled occupations with salaries between €30,000 and €60,000. No labour market test is required for the green card applications. Green cards are issued for two years initially and will normally lead to the granting of permanent or long-term residence after that.

The work permit scheme is mainly for non-green card occupations in the €30,000 to €60,000 annual salary range. A work permit may be granted only in exceptional circumstances for occupations with salaries below €30,000. There are also a number of categories of employment for which work permits will not to be considered, as vacancies for such positions can be filled from within the EEA. Work permits are the subject of a labour market needs test and are granted initially for a period of two years, and then for a further period of up to three years.

Currently employment permit holders constitute approximately 1.5% of the total labour force. Given that our current employment permit arrangements were designed to be vacancy-driven, the numbers of permit applications and consequent numbers of permits issued over the last six months have been showing a consistent downward trend. Our employment permit arrangements are being reviewed to ensure their ongoing relevance to the needs of the Irish labour market.

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