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

To answer the question in reverse, my understanding is that the answer is "Yes". While every case is slightly different, generally once somebody is legally permitted to be in this State, they can apply for a work permit. I can deal with the Deputy on specific cases.

Regarding home care assistants, thankfully, we have made some progress on this. The Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Butler, and I, and our Departments, came together with a working arrangement since last March to do some research in this area and engage all the stakeholders and providers of these services to see how we could best respond to a shortage of available talent to work in the home to provide care. The report contained 16 recommendations. If we implement all these recommendations, in the long run, they will be able to deal with a shortage of talent locally through training, initiatives, campaigns and marketing. In the short term, there was a recommendation that our Department would sanction home care assistants and take them off the ineligible occupation list. The ask was for 1,000 permits to be facilitated and that is something we have agreed to fast track. I hope to be able to make an announcement on that in the next couple of days because it is an important area. I know the Deputy has raised this issue a lot as it is something he is anxious about so I am glad it is finally moving in the right direction.

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