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

I do not think any of us would stand over the processing time for permits over the last year. However, we have to recognise that the number of applications went up by 70% and those numbers are continuing to increase this year. It looks like there will be over 35,000 permits applied for this year. We have put an action plan together since last November under the guidance of the Tánaiste. We have trebled the number of staff working in this sector and more than trebled the number of permits being issued per week. This time last year an average of about 250 or 300 permits were processed per week. Last week, for example, over 1,200 permits were processed and issued. In the majority of cases they are successfully processed. There has been a major improvement. There was a backlog coming into this year of about 11,000 permits. That is now down to under 6,000 and we are processing the general permits much more quickly than that.

The Deputy mentioned seven months. That is not the case any more, thankfully. The critical permits are down to about six weeks processing time, which I think is acceptable. Naturally when we bring the general permits down to that level we will be able to go further with the six weeks. The general employment permit was around 23 or 24 weeks and is back down to 16 weeks with trusted partners and about 21 weeks-----

See this speech in context