Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I assure the Deputy that this is an issue all over the country, and not just in the Kingdom of Kerry. There are staff shortages across a range of sectors. The unemployment rate is now less than 5%. This was confirmed again earlier by the Central Statistics Office. That is good news, but it does create challenges. We are looking at this in the context of different initiatives, such as, for example, the critical skills employment permit. We have dedicated many extra resources there. Applications are now being turned around in under six weeks. That is a major improvement on where we were recently. We are now allowing students to work for extra hours in the summer, and this will not come against them in relation to their Student Universal Support Ireland grants. I have asked my officials, working with their counterparts in other Departments, to identify the blockages in the system that might deter people from taking on extra hours or that might prevent them from taking up jobs. It should be the case that work always pays. Doing more work should always pay. There are issues there in the system that do not always lend themselves to that objective. I have asked that some work would be done to examine those issues quickly.

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