Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Very often in the context of the debate we are having nationally at the moment about migration, we sometimes conveniently ignore the critical contribution to the economy of migrants in the workplace. In the context of this Bill I want to focus in particular on the people internationally whom we seek to come to work here because of their critical skill sets. I refer in particular to people who work in our health service, public and private, the IT sector and people with a range of other skills without whom the Irish economy would not work as well. We have a specific sector in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment dealing with critical skills visas.

I want to make an observation and I implore the Minister of State not to say in response that it is not his area of responsibility, it is the responsibility of the Department of Justice or the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science or whatever the case may be. I want to bring a particular anomaly to his attention. I have had the experience of engaging with a number of people in my constituency who have moved here under the critical skills visa provision. In my experience they work in IT and healthcare in particular but there are many other skill sets that are also covered by that visa provision. Like all people who work here on visas, after a period they are entitled to be joined by family members. In the particular case with which I am familiar, family members came here for a number of years. One family member sat the leaving certificate in 2022 and another sat it in 2023 but because of the visa stamp, which was stamp 2, they were not in a position to take up an offer of a place in university. If they were to take one up, they would have to pay a foreign student rate. One of the cases I am aware of involved an engineering course in UCC where the fees are €15,000 for a foreign student.

If we as a nation are the beneficiaries of these people working in the Irish economy, we must treat them better. What is required is for the Departments of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and Justice to sit down together and accept there is a problem and that they cannot continue to pass the parcel. Somebody has to collectively decide that we are going to fix this.

Another manifestation of the problem is that having been unable to take up a place in university a student decided to pursue a post-leaving certificate course in pre-nursing and midway through the course the student could not continue with it because there is a work experience element for which permission to work is required and because the visa is a stamp 2 rather than stamp 4, the student could not avail of that. It was a case of being thwarted at every turn. This is an issue that will come home to roost. We will not be attractive to these critical skills employees if we do not address this issue. In his reply, I ask the Minister of State to perhaps signal that he and his Department will be part of a round-table discussion that will address all of the complexities of this issue. I accept it is not simple but I believe – I am sure the Minister of State concurs with me – if we do not address this matter we will no longer be attractive to critical skills employees.

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