Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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154. To ask the Minister for Trade, Enterprise and Employment if a person working in Ireland under the work permit programme can transfer to another employer in the same specific sector; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28143/20]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, 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 system is designed to facilitate the entry of appropriately skilled non-EEA nationals to fill skills and/or labour shortages, however, this objective must be balanced by the need to ensure that there are no suitably qualified Irish/EEA nationals available to undertake the work and that the shortage is a genuine one.

The system is, by design, vacancy led and managed through the operation of the critical skills and ineligible occupations lists which determine employments that are either in high demand or are ineligible for consideration for an employment permit. An employment permit may be granted for an eligible occupation where there is a direct contractual arrangement between an employer and an employee and are not sector specific. Once granted, the employment permit allows the non-EEA national to commence employment in the State in the employment, with the employer, and for the period as stated on the permit.

Under the Employment Permits Acts a permit holder on their first employment permit in the State is expected to stay with the initial employer for a period of 12 months. An application for a new employment permit for a different employer, submitted within that period, will only be considered in certain circumstances such as where the employment relationship has fundamentally changed or where the permit holder has been made redundant. This attempts to strike a reasonable balance between, the employer’s expectations that the permit holder remain in his or her employment for a reasonable period of time given the costs involved in recruiting the permit holder and, on the other hand, not unduly binding the permit holder to the employer.

After 12 months the permit holder may move employer subject to a new application for an employment permit and subject to the relevant criteria.