Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are nine regional skills fora across the country. They are engaging with industry to ascertain the needs.

With regard to the work permits, which are the responsibility of my Department, I need evidence before we can issue them for certain sectors. In the area of agriculture, the horticulture sector was issued with 500 permits. The meat-processing sector got 250 permits and the dairy sector got 50. The allocation was evidence-based. The sectors sent the information to the relevant Department, which in their case was the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, and a case was then made to my Department. I absolutely recognise that there were pressures in that area. If there are pressures in other areas, I encourage them to feed into the relevant Department. What I described happened in the hospitality sector also. The matter was raised with me.

We need evidence. A priority for me is to address the needs of the 230,000 on the live register. We have to take account of the fact that there are 17.5 million people unemployed across the European Union. These are areas that we need to address.

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