Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on what I would consider to be a very important Bill. In my years as president of the Irish Road Haulage Association, I saw first-hand how many times the work permit situation caused major problems for companies when it came to hiring staff, particularly heavy goods vehicle, HGV, drivers. If we take the example of a driver from South Africa looking to take up employment in Ireland, one of the first steps would be to verify their licence with the Road Safety Authority. That is before they would even be given a work permit. The process is currently taking about nine months. If a haulage company recruits a driver who wants to come to work in Ireland and contribute to keeping the Irish economy moving smoothly, by the time the company can actually give the go-ahead, the driver will have found work somewhere else, in a country that does not have the same cumbersome system we do. I am not sure if this Bill will help that situation in any way but the Minister of State is aware of the issue now. I have written to him and I received a response only today. I also wrote to the Department of Transport. I was not happy at all with the response I received but we can take that up again.

It is very important that systems run smoothly to deal with genuine people, as my colleague, Deputy Canney, said. Their purpose is to come here to work, to contribute positively to our economy and support their families while supporting our economy and our businesses. There is a problem that exists in abundance in the health service. Every time I have had the opportunity to question HSE officials about the lack of services, a common answer is to point to the issues in recruitment and retention. We need to ask ourselves why we have these issues in recruitment and what steps we are taking to solve those issues. One obvious step is to train enough people here and pay them well enough to stay. We have a ludicrous situation within the HSE whereby we offer up to €4,000 for emigrant Irish nationals to return home and work in the health service.

Why can we not offer the €4,000 to those who are leaving and do exit interviews to ask why they are leaving? Currently, we do not do that.

I could included everything my colleague, Deputy Canney, said in my speech. I could have written his speech. The reality is that every sector and business is finding it difficult to get people to work. I had a call yesterday from a very distressed employer who received eight CVs from Irish citizens. Given the gaps between employments outlined in those CVs, he identified that they were probably from individuals who are on some form of social welfare. He arranged six interviews and not one person turned up. How long are we going to say that we are at full employment in circumstances where people just do not turn up for interviews? Perhaps the people involved got other jobs. I am casting no aspersions. The frustration for the employer is that he cannot afford to operate the permit system apart from the fact that none of the criteria relating to the employment his is offering match the eligibility criteria relating to permits. We must look at where we are going with the economy. We should be training our own people. We have almost €1 billion sitting in the national training fund earning nothing, although it might earn something in the next couple of weeks due to interest rates. The reality is that almost €1 billion is sitting in this fund and employers are still contributing to it. We need to catch up, and I do not mean just with regard to the permits system. We need to catch in the context of the apprenticeship system. We need to train people who will be actively available to us on our own soil and who are prepared to live here.

Work permits are arduous. They cost a lot of money. They are given for a year or for a maximum of two years in some cases. The eligibility criteria relate to every sector. We cannot depend on the lists available to us. I will talk about what I know, namely, HGV drivers. We can choose drivers from four countries, three of which make no sense - Japan, South Korea and Australia. If we could pay what the Australians pay their drivers, we would be doing very well. I doubt they will come here to work for us. In the same vein, Japan and South Korea are not really the recruitment areas we are looking for. The Minister of State has been asked to expand it to the Philippines and Argentina because we have been at it for some years in South Africa and that market is almost exhausted. The reality is that when you look at what we are hearing today from the National Car Testing Service in the context of having cars tested for roadworthiness, it is able to bring workers from Spain and the Philippines. We need to go and market Ireland as a place to come and work.

The other significant factor in attracting people is having houses for them to live in. We are really behind on two counts. We are at full employment but are doing nothing to further attract employees. We have not broadened the eligibility criteria and the sectors that are eligible to come into the work permits scheme and we are not building houses for them to live in when they do get here. I would be pretty concerned as to how the economy is going to function without a workforce in the same way as I am concerned about small and medium enterprises that are receiving CVs and making arrangements for interviews but are getting nothing back or having invitations for interviews accepted and then nobody turns up. How are we policing our own social welfare system? If we are saying that every sector needs employees, the reality is that we must work together. If we are at full employment, we cannot wait. We must do it now.

All sectors say that the system is too slow. I wrote to the Minister of State about a migrant worker who was here as an asylum seeker. She was based in Offaly and got a job in a nursing home in Wexford. She took two buses to get to that job and there was one simple request. The request was that international protection accommodation services, IPAS, would find accommodation in Wexford in order that she could continue in employment. No effort, and I mean no effort, was made to that so not only are we accommodating people in a way that is costing the economy money, we are not prepared to accommodate the businesses that can offer them jobs. That is the issue. I cannot understand how we do not make every effort to allow these people to avail of our jobs and us to avail of their employment. It makes no sense. I have heard nothing from the Minister of State in that regard.

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