Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Ireland operates a managed employment permits system, maximising the benefits of economic migration and minimising the risk of disrupting Ireland’s labour market. The regime is designed to facilitate the entry of appropriately skilled non-EEA nationals to fill skills or labour shortages in the State in the short to medium term. In framing policy, consideration is given to other instruments that are also available in meeting skills shortages challenges, such as upskilling and activation of people who are unemployed.

Following an internal plan of action which increased resources and implemented efficiency measures, the employment permits unit has significantly reduced the processing time for employment permit applications compared with last year when waiting time had peaked at 21 weeks. The current processing time for new employment permit applications is much shorter than that, at about 18 days, or, if it is on the critical skills list, at about 16 days.

My Department works with other Departments to provide an integrated approach to address labour and skills shortages in the longer term. My Department actively responds to concerns raised by various sectors about skills supply shortages, as evidenced by several amendments to employment permits regulations over recent years, in which the sectors most impacted by skills shortages were provided with access to employment permits, including in agriculture and the agrifood sector.

The occupational lists - ineligible occupations list and critical skills occupation list - for employment permits are subject to evidence-based reviews incorporating consideration of available research and a public consultation, which provides stakeholders with an opportunity to submit data on skills or labour shortages. Submissions to the review are considered by the interdepartmental group on economic migration policy, with membership drawn from relevant Departments, which may provide observations on the occupations under review.

My Department is currently engaging with other Departments, including the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, to consider submissions received in the last most recent public consultation to review the occupations lists which ran from June to August this year. We got more than 100 submissions during that process. I hope we can finalise the new choices we will make, I suspect by the middle of next month.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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With respect, it is not the Deputy's office that will turn them around, it is the work permits system. Of course, any Deputy's office has the right to ask questions as to the status of the applications. Last year, this took months; it now takes a short number of weeks. There may be problems with individual applications. It may be the case that some work permits need extra consideration, they may be turned down or may not be on the critical skills list. If they are not on the critical skills list, there may be other issues that delay applications. I do not know the individual cases about which the Deputy is concerned, but I know that many businesses are under pressure waiting for work permits to be sanctioned. The Deputy is right about that. We have to try to deliver as efficient a system as we can.

We have significantly increased resources for the work permits section. It is a much more efficient system now than it was a year ago. The Deputy should not forget that when many people apply for work permits, they also have to apply for visas because they come from parts of the world that require a visa to come to Ireland. My Department has no control over the timeline for visas; it is the Department of Justice. We hope that both the Department of Justice and my Department can work together for a single application process that would secure a person a visa as well as a work permit. That will take longer because of the security issues around visas and so on. It depends on where people come from and whether they are on the critical skills list. They will determine the timelines, I suspect.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for responding in a constructive way. It is not straightforward to streamline a work permits process and a visa process. What the Department of Justice has to do around visas in terms of security checks and so on can be quite complicated and time consuming. It relies on authorities in the countries people come from and, therefore, it does not always control the timelines in terms of responses. It is not straightforward but we have had initial discussions between the two Departments in terms of trying to streamline that system.

Last year, we signed off on almost 40,000 work permits. This year, the number is similar - it might be 38,000. We are getting through them quickly. There are complications when it comes to visas. We are currently in an economy that is beyond full employment. There are lots of sectors, in particular the hospitality sector but also agriculture, agrifood and construction, in which many vacancies need to be filled. We need to do that by reskilling and upskilling Irish people and making sure others from other parts of the European Union and our Single Market can come and fill those gaps. If that is not possible, we also have to have a streamlined process around bringing in skilled workers from abroad. As I said, we did that for 40,000 people last year and it will be a similar number again this year.