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

I thank Senator O'Loughlin for raising this issue, which is something we have discussed quite a lot in recent weeks, mainly in this House. It has been raised with me quite regularly by the business community and the representative bodies we engage with in the various sectors. We have spent a great deal of time over the last couple of months engaging with various sectors and businesses that have highlighted this shortage of staff as a major issue and which are finding it very difficult to access the skilled staff they need, and in some cases the unskilled staff they need, in many sectors. The Senator highlighted two today, hospitality and food production. That matches up with the data coming through to us as well.

We have engaged with the various sectors. Part of the difficulty is that this year there have been more than 17,000 applications for permits since the start of the year.Over 11,000 applications have been granted so we are clear that we are moving through a lot of applications. A backlog has developed in recent months, mainly due to the demand for medical permits, which had to be prioritised. The process involving medical permits became a lot more difficult after the HSE cyberattack so we have had to process a lot of them manually and some were applied for manually as well. We have increased staff resources and made changes in our Department to try to cater for the demand for permits and make decisions on applications a lot more speedily. We are not in charge of the visas; we just have responsibility for the work permits. The Department understands how important these work permits are for many sectors and we will try to engage with them on that.

A review is under way which is looking at the various sectors that might need changes to the permit system. We have had 29 submissions to that review, including from the sectors the Senator has referenced, such as food production and hospitality, and many others. We are working through those submissions and hopefully we can make any changes that are needed in the month of October. That usually happens in November but we are going to try to do it in October of this year if possible to try to cater for that.

The Senator is right that some sectors have gone to great lengths to source staff in Ireland and in Europe and I have met some of the representatives of those sectors. We grant permits outside of the EU and we would ask any sector or company that is making applications for permits or looking for changes to the permit lists to make every effort they can to source labour locally if they can and to engage with Pathways to Work and our Intreo offices, which provide great supports to take people off the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and social welfare. Both businesses and people are supported as they go back to work so I ask businesses to engage with that service. In the short and long term, businesses need to engage with our education system, including the higher education sector and the further education and training sector, to develop these skills locally if it all possible, rather than having to go down the route of work permits. It is difficult to explain that there are 100,000 people on the PUP and another 100,000 plus on social welfare and yet thousands of these jobs are also available. It is hard to address the need for work permits in certain sectors that do not have a need for high-skilled labour in that context. We will try to accommodate it as best we possibly can.

The Senator mentioned the food sector and although I was not in the Department at the time, in 2018 it made changes to the scheme to try to cater for that. A pilot quota-based scheme was introduced which issued 2,500 general employment permits for the meat processing industry, 500 permits for horticulture and 150 permits for the dairy sector. That quota has been used up so the ask is that it would be increased, as well as making other changes to the list. We are doing all that work at present and hopefully we will be able to provide an update before the end of October.