Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is a good question. I do not know. I have not sat around the table. It is officials from all the various Departments who are on it. I imagine there is quite a strong gender balance because the majority of officials I come across demonstrate to me a gender balance. However, I will certainly check it out for the Deputy. To be very clear, the evidence gathered around this, which is in conjunction with the expert group on future skills needs, labour market research and SOLAS, is that it is in specific areas, in this case that of the Department of Health in addition to the Department of Social Protection. The sector has not been able to provide the evidence to show it cannot reach the staff requirements it needs within the EEA. The difficulty and the questions are around the quite high number of people who are part-time, which is 75%. I have already acknowledged there could be some reasons for that because it suits some people in that sector. However, there are also the issues around contracts of employment, travel and subsistence and other matters that must be teased out. The evidence was not there to back up a need to allow permits for the sector. We reviewed the evidence for healthcare assistants in nursing homes and made changes last April, I think. That was positive and was done because the evidence was there. If we are to see changes here, and as the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and many others have said we would like to work on this, we must have the evidence to back that up.

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