Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. When I worked in the private sector, I had experience of trying to get permits for people coming into this country who were specialised at the time. That is going back a number of years ago. It was an arduous process to get the people we needed to work for us and who were specialised. Every year they had to reapply and we had to prove that they were specialists. It cost a lot of money and involved very uncertain terms and conditions for people because they were only being taken on on a yearly basis. That has probably changed. What I am hearing from industry at the moment, whether about school bus drivers, chefs, general operatives on building sites or production workers on factory floors, every employer I have spoken to has told me it is impossible to get people to work. I was talking to representatives of independent private nursing homes today and they told me that trying to get nursing staff from abroad is very arduous and can cost up to €8,000 per application.

This country effectively has what we call full employment. We have demand for our products because we have a good record of producing good-quality goods and services. We have a fantastic medtech industry, especially around Galway, and the companies involved are crying out for additional workers. The problem they keep repeating is that it is becoming more difficult to get people in because the system is very bureaucratic. It is without timelines and extremely complicated. If we are to try to capture the opportunities that are there in terms of job creation, building economic growth and producing more tax to pay for all the bills we are putting money into the moment, we have to look at the issue of work permits to make it easier for people to get skilled workers into this country. We cannot treat them as something we will only bring in the minute we need them. At this stage, it is a foregone conclusion that we need plenty of workers in this country. When we bring them in, we have to treat them as equals. We have to make sure their personal public service, PPS, identification is done as quickly as possible. I know of a case of a particular business in my own town that took somebody on and they were four weeks waiting for a PPS number so it could not pay the person. That person was living on fresh air while they were waiting for the PPS number to come through. By rights, the person should not have been working because they did not have the PPS number but in order to keep the business going they had to get the work done.

Our systems can become very convoluted and we can create a lot of paperwork in respect of something that is very simple. We should have very clear training and information for employers on how to go about recruiting people and how the State will assist them in applying for the permits, rather than telling them what they have done wrong when they submit something. The communication process around that is very important. Most companies would say that apart from the cost of production, electricity and energy, their biggest issue is trying to keep their workforce going and trying to keep production going at the levels that their orders demand. Manufacturers and suppliers are becoming cagey as to how many orders they will take him because they do not know if they will have the personnel to actually fill these orders. We are losing potential in that. I am sure the Minister of State will take this on board. Having simple and clear processes through which we can get permits for people is important.

I know there are issues around security and identification and who is coming into the country. In the main, the people who are coming here are people who want to work and contribute to society, who will pay their way and pay their taxes. We should be opening our arms to the people who want to do that. They are not coming here on a freebie looking for something from the State. After Covid, a lot of people who came from eastern Europe and worked here went back home and have not come back to us since. That has created a void in the labour market and we have to react to it fairly fast. I hope this Bill will allow us to do that. I hope we are not creating more layers of bureaucracy. The bottom line is that we need to make sure any employer that wants to make an application has a clear pathway by which to do it and that they do it right. They should know what to do rather than taking chances and being told afterwards that they were wrong and they have to do this, that and the other. The communication between the Department and employers needs to be better.

It would be worthwhile to host a number of workshops around the country, through IBEC, to help businesspeople better understand the processes involved. We have to educate the HR fraternity as to how to make these applications and how to make them right so they can get them through faster. It is only reasonable that we think about this in order to make sure we are doing things right. The economy will benefit from it in the long run. The country will benefit from it and every aspect of life will benefit from it. We have a great country. We need to just realise the potential we have in the demand for our products and services. Let us capitalise on that.

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