Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. The fact is that we are now experiencing full employment in Ireland. Some economists say that we are beyond full employment and that there are more vacancies than there are people available and qualified to fill them. This is only the second time in our history that we have achieved that. While that creates real problems, some of which the Deputy has touched on, in the round it is something to be celebrated. There are 2.6 million people at work in Ireland. Unemployment is almost at an all-time low. Female participation in the workforce is at an all-time high. Youth unemployment is also close to an all-time low. That has some negative consequences. There is a cloud to that silver lining, namely the fact that recruitment and retention is a real problem in the public and private sectors, in urban and rural Ireland, in well-paid jobs and poorly paid jobs and in large and small firms. Almost nobody is not facing some challenges around recruitment and retention at the moment, and the Government needs to act on that.

The kinds of things we are doing include increasing the number of places in our universities and the number of apprenticeships so that more skilled people come through. We will have about 9,000 apprenticeships this year and will hit our target of 10,000 ahead of 2025. We are also investing more in upskilling and doing the best we can to enable people who are currently on welfare and are remote from the labour market to join it. Many people currently in receipt of social welfare payments could, with a little more support, enter the labour market. We are working on that through activation mechanisms, led by the Minister, Deputy Humphreys.

Another solution is work permits and work visas for people coming from outside the European Union. Those from the European Union do not even need a work permit or work visa; they can just come here. People from outside the European Economic Area need a work permit and a work visa. We issued 40,000 such permits last year, which is a very high number. The turnaround time for a work permit or work visa is now two or three weeks.

We have also relaxed the rules around who can come here. Pretty much anybody with construction skills can qualify for a work permit because we need them desperately in order to build more housing. For the first time, we allow people to come here for the purposes of working in home care. Those are the kinds of changes we have made. The list of eligible professions and occupations is currently being updated. That should be done by the summer. We are also trying to bring in a new category of work permit around seasonal work, which is particularly important in the agrifood sector as well as in tourism and hospitality. Action is being taken at every level to try to increase the number of people who are in the country already and have skills and are able to work, as well as opening pathways for legal migration into the country where people have skills we need.

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