Written answers

Wednesday, 31 March 2021

Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment

Work Permits

Photo of Martin BrowneMartin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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165. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the average wait time for employment permit renewals; and if his attention has been drawn to delays in the system (details supplied). [17328/21]

Photo of Leo VaradkarLeo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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In March 2020, the Employment Permits Section of my Department implemented a COVID-19 contingency plan to ensure that the employment permit regime could continue to operate throughout the crisis. Since 30th March, the employment permit system has been operating fully remotely and online.

Operational practices have been adjusted to replace the paper-based elements of the service to allow for a fully online process involving electronic/scanned documents and all decisions/outcomes now issue via e-mail rather than by post. Agreement was reached with the Immigration Service Delivery in the Department of Justice and Equality on arrangements to introduce, on a temporary basis, a type of “e-employment permit” and a similar soft copy process to transition to permanent residence permission.

The current processing waiting times for Trusted Partner applications, which include both new and renewal applications, is 2 weeks. Trusted Partners are regular users of the service and account for 74% of all applications. The current processing waiting times for Standard applications, which include both new and renewal applications, is 5 weeks. These processing times are largely within our ambitious customer service targets of 2 and 4 weeks respectively. Therefore there are no delays in processing renewal permits at present.

Full details in relation to the contingency arrangements introduced by the Employment Permits Section in response to the pandemic can be accessed on my Department's website through the following link:

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