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

I thank Deputy Colm Burke for raising this very important matter and assure him that we have tried to work with the Departments of Health and Justice to improve the situation.

The State's employment permit system is designed to supplement Ireland's skills and labour supply over the short to medium term by allowing the recruitment of nationals from outside the EEA where such skills or expertise cannot be sourced from within the EEA at that time. The system is, by design, vacancy led and managed through the operation of the critical skills and ineligible occupation lists. Doctors, including non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, are on the critical skills list.

The critical skills employment permit is targeted at highly skilled people in eligible occupations deemed to be critically important to growing Ireland's economy and who are in significant short supply in our labour market. The permit provides for immediate family reunification and broad access to the labour market for dependants, spouses and partners, as well as for fast-tracking to long-term residency after two years. The criteria attached to this permit type include the requirement for the non-EEA national to have secured a job offer and employment contract of at least two years. As most NCHD contracts tend to be six to 12 months in duration, until recently these doctors had to apply for a general employment permit which had to be renewed after each contract. To reduce this administrative burden, my Department, working with the Department of Health, introduced a new two-year multi-site general employment permit in November 2021. This new permit for non-EEA doctors was established to eliminate the requirement for a new permit for each six-month rotation, thereby reducing the administrative burden on the Department, the HSE, hospitals and, most importantly, on the doctors themselves. This new permit is only available to public hospitals who hold trusted partner status with the Department.

Under the terms of this new permit, the doctor is required to provide a new contract and location to the Department at the end of each rotation, rather than applying for a new permit each time. At the end of the two-year period, the doctor will be eligible to apply to my Department for a stamp 4 support letter, which will put him or her on a pathway to permanent residency. Previously, this was only issued after a five-year period.

To coincide with the introduction of this new permit, the Department of Justice created a new stamp 1H, which is issued to all doctors who hold a multi-site general employment permit. This new permission requires doctors to register yearly with the Department of Justice, as well as providing a stamp 1G permission to spouses of these doctors, allowing them to access the labour market without the need for an employment permit.

In addition to this new permit, in March 2022 the opening of the temporary fast track to stamp 4 permission scheme was announced. All non-EEA doctors working in the State for more than two years while holding a general employment permit between 2018 and 2022 can apply to my Department for a stamp 4 support letter.

See this speech in context