Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

With regard to amendment No. 40, providing for sector specific employment permits would only be possible were the Department to waive all checks on the employer, which I cannot accept. Currently, all employers of permit holders are on the Department’s database, which is regularly checked by the National Employment Rights Authority in the course of its employment permit compliance inspections. Last year in many instances, informed by and with access to the employment permits database, NERA carried out unannounced visits in areas of risk relating to employment permits both during and outside of office hours. These visits are aimed at establishing the level of compliance and identifying potential employment law breaches in workplaces visited. Where issues are encountered a full inspection of the employer is carried out. In 2013 NERA detected 453 possible breaches of the Employment Permits Acts and 472 suspected breaches were detected. Some 48 employers were successfully prosecuted under the Employment Permits Acts in 2013. Almost 100 additional cases are currently at various stages in the prosecution process for hearing in 2014.

A sectoral permit regime in which I as Minister would potentially have no line of sight on current employers of permit holders runs the risk of undermining this compliance work by NERA and significantly weakening the ability of the State to control and monitor employers of permit holders. Part of the evaluation of the employment permit application is to check the bona fides of the employer as well as establishing that there are actual labour shortages for the job to be filled. Refusals arise where the employer is not deemed to be operating legitimately and where no such labour shortage is demonstrated. The Deputy’s amendment would make impossible a targeted approach to meeting labour market skills shortages through the permit system.

In regard to the Deputy’s point that our permits system binds employees to employers, the statistics from my processing section simply do not bear this out. Of the nearly 3,100 new permits issued last year, over half were for employees who were changing employer. For these reasons, I cannot accept the Deputy’s proposed amendments and deem the existing schemes to best meet the policy rationale for employment permits.

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