Dáil debates

Thursday, 28 November 2019

Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate

Work Permits Eligibility

2:55 pm

Photo of Catherine MurphyCatherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for selecting this matter for discussion.

We all appreciate that the critical skills visa is an important one and we all want it to function. It has criteria, including an income threshold, a guaranteed contract or an offer of a contract of employment etc. I will provide an example because, when people approach Deputies with a problem, trying to resolve it often gives an insight into the kinds of challenge that people face. I have raised this issue with three different Ministers, but I cannot get a resolution to it. I will use this specific example to discuss the general issue.

I was contacted by a husband and wife, both of whom are in Ireland on critical skills visas. One is a medical doctor and the other is an engineer. There is no issue for the engineer, but there is for the medical doctor, who is not in employment. She had employment at the beginning, but that contract did not last. Many of our GPs are self-employed, as are many of the locums who fill in for them. GPs want to employ locums on a self-employed basis because of reasons of taxation and so on that would lead to problems otherwise. As such, I am discussing a specific category.

The doctor in question is highly skilled but not working. When I raised her case with three different Ministers, one of the replies I received was that the Department of Justice and Equality had corresponded with the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation and the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service, INIS, which is a part of the former. According to the reply, INIS had advised that applying for stamp 4 residency permission would permit an individual to establish and operate a business and was reckonable as residence when applying for citizenship and so on. I was trying to find out whether someone in that category could be granted permission to be self-employed and was pointed in this direction by INIS. However, this approach will not work because, as the Minister of State knows, one can only obtain a stamp 4 if one meets the other qualifying criterion relating to one's length of time in the country. I am going around in circles.

Of concern is the fact that we have a deficit of GPs and doctors generally. Their skills are needed. In the case in question, the doctor can stay in Ireland because her husband has a critical skills visa, but I cannot imagine that she is the only example of this situation. Are we failing to retain doctors who have come to Ireland because of difficulties around the types of employment common among GPs? Are people who have come to Ireland in good faith finding that the employment they expected is not available? This is a specific category of a more general issue. Will the Minister of State consider it with the Minister for Health and the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation? I do not see how the issue can be resolved. There is a wider issue of retaining the skills in question.

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