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

I thank the Senator for raising this issue. I am glad I have been able to make it to the House because it is an important topic. We were caught in traffic in Drogheda but we made it in time. It is good to be here.

We had a discussion on this last week as well. It is certainly a very relevant issue that has been raised by many colleagues across the board. I have engaged with the various sectors and businesses over the summer and the availability of talent and skills is an issue that has come up quite a lot in the last three or four weeks. The Senator mentioned bus drivers and lorry drivers. That is a very common issue that is coming through a lot in recent weeks and months.

Yesterday, I also met with a number of retailers that are under serious pressure. One of the groups involved had 50 or 60 jobs available on that day across four or five shops. There are a lot of vacancies in many sectors, including in agrifood and agriculture. We met the IFA last week, and this is a big issue for it too. It is something we are trying to find ways to address across a number of Departments.

The Senator raised the issue of visas and permits so I will focus on that but we are trying to look at this issue through Pathways to Work with the Minister for Social Protection and through my own Department, where the Tánaiste and the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, are working on it together. We are also doing work in higher education with the Minister for of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, and the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins. Across those three Departments, we intend to work with the various sectors this year and in the years ahead to try to address some of that skills gap through on-the-job training, higher education, further education and training, FET, apprenticeships and so on. There are a lot of opportunities there. Many of these sectors might not have had to avail of opportunities in the past so we will try to focus resources to make that happen as best we possibly can, in order to close the skills gap in the long term and future-proof this country. In the short term, the Senator is right that there is a major issue in many sectors heading into Christmas. That is something we are investigating under the permit structure to see how we can address that as well.

The issue of visas is dealt with by the Minister for Justice. The employment permits system is designed to facilitate the entry of appropriately skilled non-EEA nationals to fill skills and-or labour shortages in the short to medium term, in circumstances where there are no suitably qualified Irish or EEA nationals available to undertake the work and that the shortage is a genuine one. The system is managed through the operation of the critical skills occupations list and the ineligible occupations list, which determine employments that are either in high demand or are ineligible for consideration for an employment permit. In order to ensure that the employment permit system continues to meet the needs of the labour market and the economy, the lists are subject to twice-yearly evidence-based reviews. Once one review is completed, the next review begins with the opening of a public consultation phase.

In conducting the reviews, my Department works with other Departments to promote an integrated approach to address labour and skills shortages in the longer term. Where shortages are clearly evidenced, the employment permit system is flexible enough to address them in real time. The system is, by design, vacancy-led and driven by the changing needs of the labour market. A review of the occupation lists is currently nearing completion, and all submissions are being actively considered in consultation with sectoral representatives, the relevant policy Departments and the economic migration interdepartmental group. If it is an agriculture issue, we will engage with that Department, if it is to do with transport we will deal with the Department of Transport and so on. It is envisaged that the review will be finalised in the coming weeks and any changes necessary to deal with verified skills or labour shortages will be taken at that time. In regard to where we are today, applications for employment permits have seen a significant increase over the course of the year. To the end of the last month, some 14,624 applications were received, representing a 35% increase over the same period in 2020 and a 19% increase on 2019, which itself represented an 11-year high. To date, my Department has issued some 10,849 employment permits since the beginning of the year, which represents a significant volume of activity.

Recently, processing times have been impacted by this significant increase in demand and also by the HSE cyberattack. These factors resulted in a significant additional administrative burden in dealing with applications associated with the July doctors rotation which were submitted either manually or by other non-standard methods. It is important to point out that when set against other international employment permit regimes, Ireland continues to compare extremely favourably. However, my Department, which constantly strives to improve the situation, is conscious of the recent lengthening of timeframes for processing applications and is taking a range of measures to clear the current backlog as quickly as possible and deal with priority areas. My Department advises employers to take current timelines into account as part of their recruitment plans but we are, of course, allocating more resources to help tackle the backlog as quickly as possible.