Dáil debates

Thursday, 27 October 2022

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions

Work Permits

9:30 am

Photo of Colm BurkeColm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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7. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will provide an update in respect of recent changes to the way that doctors can access employment permits and visas; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [53593/22]

Photo of Colm BurkeColm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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I seek an update in respect of the changes to the way that doctors can access employment permits and visas. We have a huge challenge in recruiting doctors and it is important that the process of getting them into the country is not delayed once they have been advised that employment is available.

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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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.

9:40 am

Photo of Colm BurkeColm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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As the Minister of State will be aware, we are now competing on the world market in respect of the employment of doctors. Any change being brought about which will facilitate the recruitment of doctors such that a very fast mechanism is in place is important. As for the scheme now in place, however, is there a need to set up a review of it in, say, six months to see how it is working and to see if any further changes can be made in order to make sure we are not losing people with the medical skills to other jurisdictions? We are competing with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Therefore, we need to be fast and efficient in dealing with applications. Can a review process be put in place in, say, 12 months to see how the scheme is working, if further changes need to be made and if there are glitches in the system that need to be resolved?

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Again, I thank Deputy Burke for raising this issue. We keep this under review. The changes were put in place last November in our Department and then the Departments of Health and Justice followed suit. The three Departments are working quite closely to try to prioritise this area.

When it comes to judgments on the permits, we have made a lot of changes in our own Department to streamline that overall process and to be responsive. The time for most permit applications is down to a couple of weeks now. We have for a long number of years prioritised all cases related to health.

The system is probably correct now. It allows us to compete for talent, certainly when it comes to medical doctors, all over the world. I think we compare quite favourably with any other jurisdiction. We keep this under review and engage with the Departments of Health and Justice quite regularly on it. As late as yesterday, the Tánaiste, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and I and our officials all met again to review the system in general in order to see how we can align our services to make them as fast and efficient as possible. When it comes to critical skills, we want to be able to react quickly. I believe we can do so, but we will keep this under review. If Deputy Burke has any issues he wants to raise directly, that is no problem at all. I am happy to meet him.

Photo of Colm BurkeColm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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The problem we have is that a lot of the smaller hospitals around the country still have shortages of general doctors.

Another problem arising - I know it does not come under the remit of the Minister of State's Department but it is something we need to look at - is doctors transferring from one hospital to another and being on emergency tax. It is causing huge frustration and there needs to be more co-ordination between Departments on it. The Minister of State talked about going across his Department and the Department of Health. His Department is also going across the Department Finance and the Revenue Commissioners. That is a big issue as regards people being on emergency tax for a long time. It is frustrating people and they are tending to say "I am getting out of here" because of the tax structure and the lack of a more structured process. Once a person gets one contract, they should not have to go onto emergency tax if they move in six months' time. That is not an issue for the Minister of State's Department but it is a case of all Departments needing to work together to try to make sure we streamline the process for these people who are coming into this country and providing a valuable service.

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I agree. It is important that we have streamlined the process. It is now much more accommodating to the situation regarding stamp 4 and family reunification. The issues the Deputy raises probably cross over with the Department of Finance and Revenue as well as the Department of Social Protection. I am certainly happy to raise them. We have been for a long number of years trying to implement a lot more cross-departmental arrangements to solving problems, and that is working quite well. I will raise the issues the Deputy raises. If there are any others, I ask him to let us know because we value the expertise of the people coming to work here. We need them to complement our own talent. Changes have been made in respect of the number of doctors coming through our education system. We would encourage the continuation of that work along with the Minister, Deputy Harris, in that area. We are very much open to working cross-departmentally. I will bring any issues the Deputy raises to the relevant Departments.

Photo of Catherine ConnollyCatherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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I will now go back to Questions Nos. 6, 12 and 19. I apologise to Deputies O'Donnell and O'Dowd. Question No. 6 was grouped with their questions. I did not see that and Deputy Dillon was not in the Chamber.

May I make a general point before we go on? If there are substitutes, they generally have to be notified within a certain time. Otherwise, I will be inconsistent and unfair and that is just not fair to Deputies. There is a timeframe for such notifications. I remind Deputies of that. I am sometimes caught out by it myself when I am not in the Chair, so I fully understand, but I will not deal with late applications in the middle of the morning because it is not easy enough and just not fair.